Question #324ec

1 Answer
Mar 14, 2017

"260 g NaNO"_3

Explanation:

The thing to remember about a solution's molarity is that it's supposed to tell you the number of moles of solute present in exactly "1 L" of solution.

In this case, a "1.5-M" sodium nitrate solution will contain 1.5 moles of sodium nitrate, the solute, for every "1 L" of solution.

In other words, regardless if you scale this solution up or down, i.e. if you make more than "1 L" of less than "1 L", it must always contain 1.5 moles of solute per liter.

This implies that you can use molarity as a conversion factor to go from the volume of the solution to the number of moles it contains or vice versa.

In your case, the solution has a total volume of "2 L", so it must contain twice as many moles as "1 L" of the same solution

2.0 color(red)(cancel(color(black)("L solution"))) * overbrace("1.5 moles NaNO"_3/(1color(red)(cancel(color(black)("L solution")))))^(color(blue)(="1.5 M NaNO"_3)) = "3.0 moles NaNO"_3

To convert the number of moles to grams, use the compound's molar mass

3.0 color(red)(cancel(color(black)("moles NaNO"_3))) * "85.0 g"/(1color(red)(cancel(color(black)("mole NaNO"_3)))) = color(darkgreen)(ul(color(black)("260 g NaNO"_3)))

The answer must be rounded to two sig figs, the number of sig figs you have for the molarity and volume of the solution.