How are stoichiometry and molarity related?

1 Answer
Jul 16, 2018

Well, stoichiometry requires EQUIVALENCE with respect to mass and charge....

Explanation:

And for an older treatment of the principles involved, see [this old answer.](https://socratic.org/questions/can-you-explain-balancing-chemical-equations-in-detail) And the fundamental principle of stoichiometry is "garbage in equals garbage out". Every chemical reaction must be balanced with respect to mass and charge. A 10*g mass of reactants from all sources yields at most a 10*g mass of products.

"Molarity" is a concentration term, i.e. "molarity"="moles of solute"/"volume of solution"...and as such it has the units of mol*L^-1.. And so if we have TWO of the three quantities, say "molarity" and "volume", we can get the third.."moles of solute"...

"molarity"xx"volume"="moles"....and this is certainly consistent dimensionally. What do I mean by this?

And a practical example? Well suppose I gots a 100*mL volume of HCl(aq), that is 1*mol*L^-1 with respect to HCl. What mass of sodium hydroxide is required for equivalence?

We write out the stoichiometric equation as a preliminary:

HCl(aq) + NaOH(aq)rarr NaCl(aq) +H_2O(l)

n_"HCl"=0.100*Lxx1*mol*L^-1=0.100*mol

And for equivalence we require equimolar sodium hydroxide...

0.100*molxxunderbrace(40.0*g*mol^-1)_"molar mass of NaOH"=4.00*g...i.e. a 4*g mass of hydroxide is required for equivalence.