Question

84 g of baking soda (sodium bicarbonate) reacts with 60 g of vinegar. The reaction produces 18 g of water and 82 g of salt called sodium acetate and some carbon dioxide, that bubbles out of the beaker and could not be measured. Use the law of conservation of mass to determine the mass of oxygen used. explain, in your own words how you solved this problem?

Answer 1

To solve this problem, we need to apply the law of conservation of mass, which states that mass cannot be created or destroyed in a chemical reaction. This means that the total mass of the reactants must be equal to the total mass of the products.

We start by writing a balanced chemical equation for the reaction between baking soda and vinegar:

NaHCO3 + CH3COOH → NaCH3COO + H2O + CO2

This equation tells us that one mole of baking soda (sodium bicarbonate) reacts with one mole of vinegar (acetic acid) to produce one mole of sodium acetate, one mole of water, and one mole of carbon dioxide.

We can use the molar masses of the compounds involved to convert the given masses into moles:

84 g of baking soda is equivalent to 0.8 moles (84 g / 84 g/mol)

60 g of vinegar is equivalent to 1.0 moles (60 g / 60 g/mol)

18 g of water is equivalent to 1.0 moles (18 g / 18 g/mol)

82 g of sodium acetate is equivalent to 1.0 moles (82 g / 82 g/mol)