"It's barium chloride."

Me: Bye Lindsey!
Lindsey: You're leaving?
Me: Yeah, I have my practical exam for my chem lab. We have to dissociate our precipitates and then figure out what ions we have.
Lindsey: I have no idea what you just said.
Me: I have to take a solid, turn it into a liquid, and find the elemental make up of it.
Lindsey: Turning a solid into a liquid? YOU'RE CRAZY!

Today I had my practical test for my chem lab. I really had no idea what the heck I was doing. I spent the first 30 minutes just staring at my paper and my crystalline solid wondering what the heck I was supposed to do to even start this thing.
For the test we were each given an unknown solid, and we were supposed to dissolve it and then figure out which ions we had, which would tell us what the solid was composed of. Simple enough.
I finally figured out that my solid dissolved in both water and ammonia. I then had to create solutions of my solid, so I made up an ammonia and dissociated solid solution. Then you run the solution through all these different tests to figure out the ions. Zinc? No. Silver? No. Barium? YES! I had barium. On to my anion.
I tried the sulfide test first, which just involved mixing my solution with some chemicals. I got a precipitate, but it wasn't black, which meant that I did not have sulfide, but I did have a halide (iodide, bromide or chloride). Next I ran the iodide/bromide test by mixing my solution with some other chemicals and chlorine water. If it changed a nasty color, you had one of the two ions. My solution stayed clear. It was on to the chloride test. I ran the test and ended up with a precipitate confirming the existance of chlorine in my solid.
I took my answer, barium chloride, to the teacher, just to be told that although I had barium, I did not in fact have chlorine. He advised me to make sure that the chlorine water was good and to run the color tests again. I did. The chlorine water was good, as it worked with the known solution of iodide that I made, creating a violet color. However, running the experiment on my unknown solution yielded another clear solution. He made me run the test another two times before he accepted my answer and gave me full credit instead of a deduction.
That's how I roll.