Question #8b2b6

1 Answer
Feb 20, 2017

Here's what I got.

Explanation:

We usually reserve parts per million to express very, very small concentrations of solute, sometimes called trace amounts, in a given solution, but you can pretty much use parts per million to express any concentration if you want.

A concentration of "1 ppm" corresponds to 1 part solute present for every 10^6 parts solution. To find a solution's concentration in parts per million, you can use the equation

color(blue)(ul(color(black)("ppm" = "grams of solute"/"grams of solution" xx 10^6)))

If you take water's density to be approximately equal to "1.0 g mL"^(-1), then you can say that your solution will contain

1000 color(red)(cancel(color(black)("mL"))) * "1.0 g"/(1color(red)(cancel(color(black)("mL")))) = "1000 g"

After you mix the solute and the solvent, you will end up with

m_"solution" = "400 g" + "1000 g" = "1400 g"

This means that the solution will have a concentration of

(400 color(red)(cancel(color(black)("g"))))/(1400color(red)(cancel(color(black)("g")))) xx 10^6 = color(darkgreen)(ul(color(black)(3 * 10^5color(white)(.)"ppm")))

The answer is rounded to one significant figure.

As you can see, it's not very practical to use parts per million for such concentrated solutions.