How many grams of oxygen does this problem contain?

Question

A sample of ascorbic acid (vitamin C) is synthesized in the laboratory. It contains 1.50 g of carbon and 2.00 g of oxygen. Another sample of ascorbic acid isolated from citrus fruits contains 4.02 g of carbon. How many grams of oxygen does it contain?


Which law are you assuming in answering this question?
Newton's second law
Law of constant composition
Law of dimentional analysis
Law of conservation of mass
Law of intensive properties

Answer 1

This one is simple. Each molecule of any substance, say water, has precisely the same mixture of component atoms as any other molecule of the same substance. So, since one molecule of water has two hydrogen atoms and one oxygen atom, two molecules of water would have twice the number of hydrogens, 4, and twice the number of oxygens,2. A gazillion water molecules would have a gazillion times as many hydorgens and a gazillion times as many oxygens. One mg or gram or ounce or pound or whatever unit of water has a certain number of molecules. If you double the number of grams, you will double the number of molecules. If you double the number of molecules, you will, of course, double the number of each kind of atom in the pile of molecules. No matter what we are doing (doubling, tripling or 1.29ing) to the amount of one component of a molecule, we will do the same (doubling, tripling or 1.29ing) to every other component of the molecule.

So by how much are we increasing the carbon in your samples. In other words, 4.02 g is how many time larger than 1.50 g. We can find this by dividing 4.02 by 1.50. The answer is that 4.02g is 2.68 times as large as 1.50 g. Therefore, the amount of oxygen in sample two is also 2.68 times larger than in the first sample. 2.0g x 2.68 equals 5.36 g of oxygen.

Certainly, this is the Law of Constant Composition.

Answer 2

Ascorbic acid is C6H8O6. So we can use law of constant compositions (or law of definite proportions) to solve that. We can also use the concept of the mole in which is really important.

Since the ratio of C and O in the compound is 1 mol C : 1 mol O, then 12.01g C = 16 g O. Even though we can use the data on the first synthesis, I am afratd that it will have an error in computing the mass of C in the 2nd sample. Therefore as we compute it.

4.02 g C x 1 mol C/12.01 g C x 1 mole O/1 mole C
x 16.00 g O/ 1 mol O
= 5.36 g O

Let us look if we gonna work....

1.50 g C/2.00 g O = 4.20 g C/ x g O

5.60 g O

See the difference?

I hope I had answered your question

God bless!

Answer 3

The answer is 5.36 g of carbons using the Law of Constant Composition

Answer 4

In order to answer your question with the data given, one must assume that
1) The synthesized compound is identical to the organic compound.
2) There is no measurable waste in either process.

Then, by ratio,

1.5/4.02 = 2/x
x = 2*4.02/1.5 = 5.36 g oxygen

The answer to your second question is damfino.

Answer 5

5.36 g, and this is based on the law of constant composition.