Sunday, February 6, 2011

Molar Volume Lab (Long Overdue!)

So here's a little something about the Molar Volume Lab. (yes, we did this lab ages ago)

Basically, we had to fill up a sink with nice warm water. Then, we had to take a lighter (that contains Butane gas) and after weighing it, we submerged the lighter under the water and lit it (no, there weren't any flames... cause it was under water!) so that the gas collected into a graduated cylinder. Then we had to dry the lighter in the fancy little oven type thing and weigh the lighter's mass again. We had to use the new mass and subtract it from the old mass to calculate the mass of Butane we'd used. Next, we calculated the molar volume of butane by calculating the volume we'd used over the mols of butane.
In my group's case, we calculated 38.7 L/mol, and the actual amount should have been 22.4 L/mol... let's just say, we were a tad bit off :)

It's cool to apply all these calculations we've been doing to actual chemistry and experiments. So the things we're learning ARE usable!

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