You have 505 mL of a 0.125 M HCl solution and you want to dilute it to exactly 0.100 M. How much water should you add?

Assume volumes are additive.

1 Answer
anor277
Nov 19, 2016

Approx. 100⋅mL of water should be added.

Explanation:

Moles of HCl=505⋅mL×10−3L⋅mL−1×0.125⋅mol⋅L−1=0.0631⋅mol.

We require a concentration of 0.100⋅mol⋅L−1.

But Concentration=Moles of soluteVolume of solution

Thus Volume of solution = Moles of soluteConcentration

=0.0631⋅mol0.100⋅mol⋅L−1=0.631⋅L, or 631⋅mL.

And thus we dilute the original 505⋅mL volume to 631⋅mL.

IMPORTANT EXPERIMENTAL NOTE:

Ordinarily, we would never add water to an acid. Why not? Well, because if you spit in conc. acid, it spits back at you. Because here we deal with fairly dilute acids (i.e. ~0.1⋅mol⋅L−1), we can relax this rule a bit and add water to the acid.

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