Question

What is the mass of 0.50 mole of baking soda, `NaHCO_3`?

Answer 1

Approx. `42*g`; that's a lot of scones..........

Explanation:

The molar mass of sodium bicarbonate is `84.01*g*mol^-1`. To find the mass of a half mole quantity, we calculate the product..........

`0.50*cancel(mol)xx84.01*g*cancel(mol^-1)-=42*g`

Now when you do chemistry problems like this, i.e. dimensionally and including the units of each quantity, it is an extra check on your calculation; i.e. do I divide or do I multiply? We wanted an answer in grams, and the product gave us an answer in grams, as we require.