Question #aadce

1 Answer
Jul 30, 2017

"800 mL"

Explanation:

For starters, you should know that an "80% v/v" methanol solution will contain "80 mL" of methanol, the solute, for every "100 mL" of solution.

If you take x "mL" to be the volume of pure methanol that must be added to the "200 mL" sample of water, you can say that the total volume of the resulting solution will be

x color(white)(.)"mL" + "200 mL" = (200 + x)color(white)(.)"mL"

Since you know that this solution must contain "80 mL" of methanol for every "100 mL" of solution, you can say that you will have

100 color(red)(cancel(color(black)("mL solution"))) * (x color(white)(.)"mL methanol")/((200 + x) color(red)(cancel(color(black)("mL solution")))) = "80 mL methanol"

This will get you

100 * (xcolor(red)(cancel(color(black)("mL methanol"))))/(200 + x) = 80 color(red)(cancel(color(black)("mL methanol")))

100 * x/(200 + x) = 80

Solve for x to get

100 * x = 80 * (200 + x)

100 * x = 16000 + 80x

20x = 16000 implies x= 16000/20 = 800

You can thus say that if you add "800 mL" of methanol to "200 mL" of water, you will end up with a solution that is "80% v/v" methanol.

The answer must be rounded to one significant figure, the number of sig figs you have for the volume of water.