Calculate the molarity of the solute in a solution containing 14.2 KCl in 250 mL solution?

I know molarity is (moles of the solute/ liters of the solution)
The issue I dont understand is the 14.2 KCl I dont know what the units are. I am assuming its not grams

1 Answer
Jun 24, 2016

"0.76 mol L"^(-1)0.76 mol L1

Explanation:

I would say that you're dealing with a solution that contains 14.214.2 grams of potassium chloride, "KCl"KCl, in "250 mL"250 mL of solution.

If this is the case, your strategy here will be to use the molar mass of potassium chloride to calculate how many moles are present in the sample

14.2 color(red)(cancel(color(black)("g"))) * "1 mole KCl"/(74.55color(red)(cancel(color(black)("g")))) = "0.1905 moles KCl"

Now, molarity is simply a measure of a solution's concentration in terms of how many moles of solute it contains per liter of solution.

This means that in order to find a solution's molarity, you essentially must figure out how many moles of solute you have in "1 L" of solution.

In your case, you know that "250 mL", which is equivalent to 1/4"th" of a liter, contains 0.905 moles.

All you have to do now is scale up this solution so that its volume becomes "1 L". Simply put, if 1/4"th" of a liter contains 0.1905 moles, it follows that "1 L" will contain four times as many moles of solute.

1 color(red)(cancel(color(black)("L solution"))) * "0.905 moles KCl"/(1/4color(red)(cancel(color(black)("L solution")))) = "0.76 moles KCl"

So, if "1 L" of this solution contains 0.76 moles of solute, it follows that its molarity is

"molarity" = color(green)(|bar(ul(color(white)(a/a)color(black)("0.76 mol L"^(-1))color(white)(a/a)|)))

The answer is rounded to two sig figs, the number of sig figs you have for the volume of the solution.