Question

Question #b9611

Answer 1

That depends on how many grams of 20-carat gold you have.

Explanation:

Now, since you didn't provide an actual mass of 20-carat gold, I'll use `x` grams.

Now, the first thing that you need to do is figure out how much gold you have in `x` grams of 20-carat gold. As you know, the purity of gold varies depending on what it's used for.

As you can see, 20-carat gold contains 83.33% gold by weight. This means that a 100-g sample of 20-carat gold will contain 83.33 g of pure gold.

In your case, `x` grams will contain

`xcolor(red)(cancel(color(black)("g 20-carat"))) * "83.33 g gold"/(100color(red)(cancel(color(black)("g 20-carat")))) = (0.833 * x) " grams of gold"`

Use gold's molar mass, which tells you what the mass of 1 mole of gold is, to determine how many moles of gold you'd get in that mass

`(0.833 * x)color(red)(cancel(color(black)("g gold"))) * "1 mole Au"/(196.97color(red)(cancel(color(black)("g gold")))) = (0.00423 * x)" moles Au"`

To get how many atoms of gold you'd get in that many moles, use the fact that 1 mole of any element contains exactly `6.022 * 10^(23)` atoms of that element - this is known as Avogadro's number.

In your case, that many moles would contain

`(0.00423 * x)color(red)(cancel(color(black)("moles Au"))) * (6.022 * 10^(23)"atoms of Au")/(1color(red)(cancel(color(black)("mole Au")))) = (2.55 * x) * 10^(21)"atoms of Au"`

To get the actual answer, simply replace `x` with the mass of 20-carat gold given to you in the problem.

ADDENDUM

For 20 g of 20-carat gold, you would get

`2.55 * 20 * 10^(21) = 5.1 * 10^(22)"atoms of Au"`