Wednesday, October 3, 2012

Simple Chemistry Calculations

The two dot points listed under the first "perform simple calculations" heading are molar mass and percentage composition, neither of which are particularly hard. Hopefully I don't end up overcomplicating this as I tend to overcomplicate everything.

Molar Mass
Molar mass is simple. Just add up the mass numbers of all of the atoms in the chemical formula, as I wrote in my post Formula Weights and Molecular Weights. (Mind you, I'm not entirely sure about the terminology, so I might have to revise that, but rest assured that I know the concepts, or at least I think I do. I'm learning too...)

Percentage Composition
Percentage composition is the next step. It's basically what % of the mass of a compound is element X, what % is element Y (Ooh. Yttrium. Or not.), and so on. It's really easy to work out the percentage composition. Just get the mass of element X and divide it by the total mass to get the % of X by mass. Then repeat for all of the elements.

For example, let's say you're trying to work out the percentage composition of water.

The molar mass of water is 18.016 (each H has a mass number of 1.008 and oxygen has a mass number of 16).

% H = (1.008 x 2) / 18.016 = 11.19% (2 d.p.)
% O = 16 / 18.016 = 88.81% (2 d.p.)

One way to check your answer is to add up the percentages. If they don't add up to 100%, you've made an error somewhere.

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