Question

Your body utilizes this reaction with sucrose. A regular bag of

Skittles has about 84 g of sucrose, if you eat the entire bag and
burn all the sugar, what mass of CO₂ will you breath out?

Answer 1

The combustion reaction of sucrose (C12H22O11) with oxygen (O2) can be represented by the following equation:

C12H22O11 + 12 O2 → 12 CO2 + 11 H2O

From the balanced equation, we can see that 1 mole of sucrose reacts with 12 moles of oxygen to produce 12 moles of carbon dioxide.

The molar mass of sucrose is approximately 342.3 g/mol (12 x 12.01 g/mol + 22 x 1.01 g/mol + 11 x 16.00 g/mol), which means that 84 g of sucrose is equivalent to:

84 g / 342.3 g/mol = 0.2456 moles of sucrose

According to the balanced equation, the combustion of 1 mole of sucrose produces 12 moles of carbon dioxide. Therefore, the combustion of 0.2456 moles of sucrose will produce:

0.2456 moles x 12 moles CO2 / 1 mole sucrose = 2.9472 moles of carbon dioxide

Finally, we can convert moles of carbon dioxide to mass using the molar mass of carbon dioxide, which is approximately 44.01 g/mol. Therefore, the mass of carbon dioxide produced from burning 84 g of sucrose in Skittles would be:

2.9472 moles x 44.01 g/mol = 129.5 g of CO2

So, if you ate an entire bag of Skittles (84 g of sucrose), you would breathe out approximately 129.5 g of carbon dioxide.