The answer says 'no effect on calculated result.' But, since there's water left over in the conical flask, wouldn't the concentration of phosphate be less than what I calculated, since I used 20 mL as my volume and the real volume is higher than that? Wouldn't the calculated result be too low?
no, you're getting confused with volumetric analysis i think. it doesn't matter if there's water in the conical flask, because all you're doing in this experiment is adding something that reacts with phosphate ions (and not water), then measuring the precipitate that's produced.
having water there won't have any effect on the amount of precipitate produced, and you can still use 20mL as your volume because that's how much
fertiliser solution there is.
also, i've got another question...somewhere, in a practice exam i think, i remember coming across a multiple choice question with a graph of enzyme activity. the activity was low at low temperatures, then low again at high temperatures. the explanation for this was that the enzyme was denatured at high temperatures but "not yet activated" (? i think??) at low temperatures. what does this mean? has anyone seen the question?