Question

A small-sized woman has 6.4 x 10-3 moles of hemoglobin (molar mass of hemoglobin = 64, 456 g/mol) in her blood. Show your work

How many hemoglobin molecules are in this person’s body?
What is the mass (g) of hemoglobin molecules in this person’s body?

Answer 1

Step-by-step explanation:

Interesting question - especially if you are afflicted by something like Leukemia where it pays to know everything you can about Hemoglobin.

Molecules

1 mole of anything has 6.02 * 10^23 in this case molecules

6.4*10^-3 moles has x number of molecules

Set up the proportion

1/6.4*10^-3 = 6.02 * 10^23 molecule / x Cross Multiply

x = 6.4*10^-3 * 6.02 * 10^23

x = 3.853*10^21 molecules

Mass Hemoglobin

1 mol of hemoglobin is 64456 grams

6.4*10^-3 moles = x grams Cross multiply

x = 64456 * 6.4*10^-3

x = 412.5 grams of hemoglobin in this woman's body.

If you are American and think in pounds, then this is roughly a pound of hemoglobin.

Considering that you need hemoglobin to carry oxygen around to various organs, it is not an awful lot. That's the miracle of the human body.