'MOLE'ten Lava

Honors chemistry period six is now on round two for these scribe posts because we had to skip Elim.

Mr. Lieberman began the class by letting us correct and ask questions about the worksheet "Mole Problems 2." The worksheet was more practice, that we all needed, on converting particles, moles, and mass. For those that missed it, 6f should be scratched out.

We also corrected and asked questions about the second converting sheet, the one with no name.

Like Kaitlyn stated in her post, the conversions are:

For grams to moles, divide by molar mass

For moles to grams, multiply by molar mass

For particles to moles, divide by Avagadro's number

For moles to particles, multiply by Avagadro's number

We, then, moved on to the lab, "% Composition of Bubble Gum," which we did not do a pre-lab for. Mr. Lieberman told us to fit all of the lab on one page, because it is a relatively short one. The procedure was as follows:

1. Take the gum and mass it with the wrapper (record)
2. Unwrap and chew gum
3. During the chewing process, mass the wrapper (record)
4. Place chewed gum on wrapper and mass it (record)

Amazingly, the mass of the gum dropped drastically, but that's because the sugar in the gum was consumed by the chewer of the gum. Our lab group's gum had a mass of 6.13 grams and the sugar within the gum had a mass of 3.97 grams. From here we had to answer 5 post-lab questions:

1. Calculate the mass of sugar in the bubble.
2. Calculate the % composition of the sugar (by mass of the bubble gum).
3. Calculate the moles of the sugar and gum using the molar masses given the procedure.
4. Using your answer from question number 3, determine a possible empirical formula for the bubble gum.
5. Researchers have found that the ideal formula for the gum is GS2, where G is a fictional elemental symbol for gum and S for sugar. How does your gum compare to the ideal? What might be some sources of error?

An empirical formula can be made by the following procedure from http://chemistry.about.com/od/workedchemistryproblems/a/empirical.htm

1. Assume you have 100 g of the substance (makes the math easier because everything is a straight percent).
2. Consider the amounts you are given as being in units of grams.
3. Convert the grams to moles for each element.
4. Find the smallest whole number ratio of moles for each element.

There is a mole quiz tomorrow, and this lab is due friday. Don't fall behind on all this work, it is alot to do. Also, there is a "mole day" party on saturday at 6:02 AM, but Mr. Lieberman did not give us alot of information on it.

-Emilio I

The scribe for tomorrow's class is: Zoe S.