C5c

Concentration and Quantitative Analysis

What is concentration?

Concentration measures how crowded something is. A room with 50 people in it is

__________________ concentrated (crowded) than if it had just 10 people.

The ___________ concentrated a solution the more crowded the solute particles.

What are the units of concentration and volume?

Concentration of solutions may be measured in:

1.

(g per dm3)

2.

(mol per dm3)

Volume is measured in dm3 or cm3

________ cm3

1 dm3.

Task
Practise converting cm3 to dm3 by filling in the tables below:

cm
1000
3

Volume

dm3
10

575
0.5
25
17
2.5
0.013
0.0675

Calculating Concentrations
Not that sort of
concentration!

You must be able to do 5 types of calculation:

1. Convert the number of moles per decimetre cubed to the number of grams per
decimetre cubed and vice versa
___________

mol/dm3

_______________x_____________= g/dm3

Molar
mass

g/dm

NaOH
NaOH
Na2CO3
Na2CO3
MgCl2
MgNO3

Concentration

mol/dm3

40
0.5
212
26.5
3.0
0.75

2. Calculate the concentration of a solution from the mass or number of moles of

solute in a particular volume.
3. Perform simple calculations involving concentration, number of moles and volume of
solution
concentration

Example:

_________

or

concentration

__________

20g of sodium hydroxide, NaOH, was dissolved in 250cm 3 of water.

a) What is the concentration of the solution in g/dm 3

b) What is the concentration of the solution in mol/dm 3

4. Perform calculations involving concentration for simple dilutions of solutions e.g.

how to dilute a 1.0mol/dm3 solution into a 0.1 mol/dm3 solution.

Example 1
You are given a 1.0mol/dm3 solution of hydrochloric acid, HCl and some water. How
would you produce 500cm3 of a 0.1mol/dm3 solution?

STEP 1

Work out a ratio of the two concentrations

divide the smallest number
by the largest one

0.1/ 1.0 = 0.1

STEP 2

Multiply this ratio by the volume you want to end up with

0.1

STEP 3

x 500 = 50cm

So 50cm3 is the volume of the

original solution that you need
to measure out

Work out the volume of water needed:

500cm3 50cm3 = 450cm3 water

5. Converting amounts of sodium to amounts of salt

If a slice of bread contains 0.2g of sodium, how much salt (NaCl) does it contain?
1.Find the ratio of the molecular mass of Na : NaCl

2. Multiply this by the amount of sodium

Note: foods may contain a natural source of sodium so the numbers on the packet are not
100% accurate.

Dilution
What is dilution?

If we add ______________ to a solution, the solute particles get ___________

apart. We say it has been ______________________.

A dilute solution has ___________________ solute molecules in one litre than a

concentrated solution.

What sort of substances do we dilute?

Why is dilution important?

food preparation -

medicines

baby milk

Using Food packaging to calclualte RDAs (recommended daily allowances)

Food packaging contains nutritional information labels.

These tell you the amounts of _______________ in food

Recommended Daily Allowances (RDAs) are the amounts of each nutrient that are
recommended for the average adult.

Converting amounts of sodium to amounts of salt

If a slice of bread contains 0.2g of sodium, how much salt (NaCl) does it contain?
2. Find the ratio of the molecular mass of Na : NaCl

2. Multiply this by the amount of sodium

Note: foods may contain a natural source of sodium so the numbers on the packet are not
100% accurate.