Today's lab was like trying to solve a mystery. Ameera and I were given two anonymous plastic baggies filled with an unknown chemical compound. Without opening the bags, we needed to use the conversion factor method and moles to figure out what the substance inside was.
We started off trying to determine what substance was in bag B5. It was the more difficult bag for us, because it was a multi-step equation in which we needed to first convert from molecules to moles, and then from moles to grams. After we subtracted the mass of the empty bag from the total mass in the end, we finally discovered that the substance in the bag had a molar mass of 100.25, which was closest to the compound Calcium Carbonate. And bingo! We verified the substance.
Finding out the unknown substance in bag A4 was much easier because it was only a one-step conversion. We found out the mass of the substance in grams by using the balance and subracting the mass of the empty bag from the substance, and then converted grams to moles by division. We then found out that the molar mass was 103.75, which was again closest to Calcium Carbonate. :)
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