Dissolving 120g of urea (mol.wt 60) in 1000g of water gave a solution of density 1.15 g/mL. What is the molarity of the solution?

1 Answer
Jun 14, 2017

"2.1 mol L"^(-1)

Explanation:

The idea here is that a solution's molarity tells you the number of moles of solute present in "1 L" of solution.

So in order to calculate a solution's molarity, you essentially need to know the number of moles of solute present in exactly "1 L" = 10^3 "mL" of solution.

Start by using the molar mass of urea to calculate the number of moles present in your sample

120 color(red)(cancel(color(black)("g"))) * "1 mole urea"/(60color(red)(cancel(color(black)("g")))) = "2 moles urea"

Now, you know that your solution contains "120 g" of urea, the solute, and "1000 g" of water, the solvent. This implies that the total mass of the solution

"mass solution = mass solute + mass solvent"

will be equal to

"mass solution" = "120 g + 1000 g" = "1120 g"

You also know that this solution has a density of "1.15 g mL"^(-1), which means that every "1 mL" of solution has a mass of "1.15 g".

Use the density of the solution to calculate its volume

1120 color(red)(cancel(color(black)("g"))) * "1 mL"/(1.15color(red)(cancel(color(black)("g"))) ) = "973.9 mL"

Now, your goal is to figure out the number of moles of solute present in 10^3 "mL" of solution, so use the known composition of the solution as a conversion factor to get

10^3 color(red)(cancel(color(black)("mL solution"))) * "2 moles urea"/(973.9color(red)(cancel(color(black)("mL solution")))) = "2.0536 moles urea"

You can thus say that the molarity of the solution is equal to

color(darkgreen)(ul(color(black)("molarity = 2.1 mol L"^(-1))))

I'll leave the answer rounded to two sig figs.