Question #d3948

1 Answer
Jun 15, 2017

"0.002 g mL"^(-1)

Explanation:

The density of a substance, rho, tells you the mass of exactly one unit of volume of said substance.

In your case, the sample of carbon dioxide has a mass of "100 mL", so you can say that one unit of volume will be "1 mL". This means that your goal here is to figure out the mass of "1 mL" of carbon dioxide.

Now, you know that the mass of "100 mL" of carbon dioxide is equal to "0.196 g".

You can find the density of carbon dioxide by dividing the mass of the sample by the total volume it occupies

rho = "0.196 g"/"100 mL"

since this will get you the mass of "1 mL" of carbon dioxide

rho = "0.196 g"/(100 * "1 mL") = "0.196 g"/100 * 1/"1 mL"

= "0.00196 g" * 1/"1 mL" = "0.00196 g"/"1 mL"

= color(darkgreen)(ul(color(black)("0.002 g mL"^(-1))))

The answer must be rounded to one significant figure, the number of sig figs you have for the volume of the sample.

You can thus say that "1 mL" of carbon dioxide has a mass of "0.002 g".

SIDE NOTE We usually express the density of a gas in grams per liter, "g L"^(-1).

In your case, the density of carbon dioxide in grams per liter is equal to

0.002 color(white)(.)"g"/(1color(red)(cancel(color(black)("mL")))) * (10^3color(white)(.)color(red)(cancel(color(black)("mL"))))/"1 L" = "2 g L"^(-1)

This is very close to the density of carbon dioxide at STP conditions

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_dioxide