eli5 Converting Grams to Mols

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I’m really struggling on understanding how to do these conversions and I am hoping someone can help me understand it step by step. I have a midterm exam this week and I really want to grasp this concept. D: The question goes:

Wine is produced by the fermentation of grapes. In fermentation, the carbohydrate glucose (C6H12O6) is converted to ethanol (C2H6O) and carbon dioxide (CO2), according to the given balanced equation.
C6H12O6=2C2H6O+2CO2

How many grams of ethanol (C2H6O) are formed from 0.95 mol of glucose (C6H12O6)? Be sure your answer has the correct number of significant figures.

In: Chemistry

2 Answers

Anonymous 0 Comments

Because this feels like doing your homework 😀 let me sketch out the steps…see if you can do it from this, and if you’re still jammed let us know.

1. The mole ratio we’re looking at is 1:2, because the reaction says one C6H12O6 turns into 2 C2H6Os. In other words, the amount of C2H6O will always be 2x the amount of glucose, so if we’re starting with 0.95mol of glucose, how much C2H6O will this reaction make? >!0.95 x 2 = 1.90mol of C2H6O!<

2. What’s the molar mass of C2H6O? >!2×12.01 + 6×1.01 + 16.00 = 46.08g/mol!<

3. Use m = nM to get the mass of C2H6O. >!1.90mol x 46.08g/mol = 87.552g of ethanol!<

4. Significant digits. >!0.95 has two sig digs, the molar mass had four and the mole ratio has “infinite sig digs”, so our answer can only have two; round to 88g.!<

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