The filter is a funnel that has 2 main inner layers, and a layer of coffee paper between them, on the bottom, and on top. The two main layers are sand and cotton. Cotton is has many fine fibers so it can filter out many solids, however it’s downside is that it absorbs a large volume of liquid. The sand filters out bigger debris and the coffee paper is made to ensure that all the materials stay apart, inside the funnel, and do not make a mess.
A labeled outline of the filter used to filter out the ions.
In one trial road salt was used in the filter which is sodium chloride. We thought that the roud salt would furthur replace any remaining silver ions in the compound. After the first trial however, we noticed that the water seemed very unclean and what used to be transparent was now opaque. It was thought of as general consenses among the experimentalists that the road salt was contaminating the water further. After several trials without the road salt, we continued to observe the opaque filtering and were unsure of any precipitates present. The conclusion still is that the ion present in water is indeed silver because even though a precipitate was not observed in the opaque water, it was still observed after acetate was added to the pre-filtered water.
Whats in my water 