how people calculated concentrations of heavy metal ions before spectrometry

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Ok so I know that spectrometry was used to calculate the concentration of substances in a solution by using calculation of wavelength absorption. Before this, how was it calculated? Like, say, lead contamination of soil and water. how did they determine it? What about things like humidity, or such?

In: Chemistry

2 Answers

Anonymous 0 Comments

The alternative to spectroscopy is to do it chemically. You would mix various different chemicals into the solution causing various different reactions to take place creating various different substances to form which can be filtered out. In order to measure the amount of lead you would have to make a lead based substance and then weigh this. There is also quick tests where you create a substance with a different color. So you could just add a dropp of something into the water and it would turn blue or something in the precense of lead.

Anonymous 0 Comments

Big chemisrty final coming up..? XD