- [Instructor] We're
told, you have a solid
that you know is mostly sodium chloride,
you suspect that it
might have or it may have
some sodium iodide, potassium chloride
or lithium chloride as well.
When you analyze a sample
you see that it contains
73% chlorine by mass.
Is the sample pure sodium chloride?
If not, what else does
it likely have in it?
So pause this video and see
if you can figure that out
and it will likely be useful
to have a period table handy
to do it.
All right, so the way we're
going to approach it is
we're gonna think about
each of these compounds
and try to figure out the
percent chlorine by mass.
And to do that, we have to think about
the molar masses of the
various constituent atoms
or the various constituent elements
that make up those compounds.
And to figure out the
molar mass for each element
I just have to look at
its average atomic mass
and say, okay I'm going to have that many
grams per mole, if I
have a mole of that atom.
Sodium,
chlorine,
iodine,
potassium,
and lithium.
And the sodium's average
atomic mass is 22.99,
chlorine is 35.45,
iodine
is
126.90,
potassium is 39.10,
and lithium is 6.94.
And so now I can remove my
period table of elements.
And so let's first think
about sodium chloride.
So,
percent chlorine...
Actually let me make a little table here,
I think that will be the
most useful thing to do.
So here I will put the various compounds.
Compound.
And here I will put the percent
Cl
by mass.
By
mass.
So first we can think
about sodium chloride
and I'll do all of these
in a different color
just to make things interesting.
So sodium chloride.
So chlorine's molar mass is 35.45
grams per mole.
And then we need to divide
that by the molar mass
of the entire compound.
So that's going to be
the molar mass of sodium
at 22.99 grams per mole.
Plus the molar mass of chlorine again
at 35.45
grams per mole.
So we have 35.45
divided by, open parentheses,
22.99
plus 35.45,
close the parentheses.
Then I get it equal.
So it looks like it's
a little bit over 60%.
And that's actually
enough for us to go on,
because if this si approximately 61%
we see that's that a
very different than 73%.
So already it's very clear
that to the first question,
is the sample pure sodium chloride?
No it's not, cause it has
a different percentage
of chlorine by mass than
pure sodium chloride would.
This would be what pure sodium
chloride would look like.
So it must have been
mixed in with something
that has a higher percentage
of chlorine by mass.
So let's look at the other candidates.
So we can look at
sodium iodide.
So sodium iodide.
What's its percent chlorine
by mass going to be?
Well this has no chlorine by mass,
so this is zero.
So if you had sodium iodide
mixed in with sodium chloride,
that would reduce the average.
That would reduce the
percent chlorine by mass.
It wouldn't increase it.
So we already can rule out this character.
Let's look at the next candidate.
Potassium chloride.
I'll write that right over here.
Potassium chloride.
And so its percent chlorine would be
the molar mass of chlorine, 35.45
divided by the molar mass
of the entire compound.
And so that would be the molar
mass of potassium, 39.10.
Plus the molar mass of chlorine, 35.45.
And we could try to calculate this,
but even when you look at
the numbers you can see that
the denominator here, this
denominator right over here
is bigger than what we
had for sodium chloride.
And we have the same numerator.
So if the denominator is bigger,
that means we're going to
get a lower value than 61%.
This is less than 61%.
And since this has a lower
percent chlorine by mass,
if it was mixed in, it
would average down from 61%.
It wouldn't go up to 73%, so we can rule
that one out as well.
And now let's look at this last candidate
and I'm feeling good
about it because something
got mixed in.
So let's look at lithium,
lithium chloride.
What is its percent chlorine by mass?
Well it's going to be the
molar mass of chlorine, 35.45.
Divided by the molar mass
of the entire compound,
and I'll just write chlorine's molar mass.
And then I'm gonna add that
to the molar mass of lithium
which is actually quite
low, 6.94 grams per mole.
So once again, when we
compare to sodium chloride,
we have the same numerator.
We have the same numerator
but we clearly have
a smaller denominator.
This value is smaller than this value
and the other number is the same.
So this has a smaller denominator,
which means that the whole
value is going to be larger.
This is going to be greater than 61%.
We take 35.45,
divided by, open parentheses,
6.94
plus 35.45,
close parentheses,
is equal to
it's roughly 84% chlorine by mass.
So this thing
is approximately 84% chlorine by mass.
So that does the trick.
If you had some lithium chloride mixed in
with your sodium chloride,
it could increase or it would increase
the percent chlorine by mass above 61%.
And actually based on these values,
based on the 61%,
the 84%
and the 73%,
you could actually figure out
what percent is your
sample of sodium chloride
and lithium chloride if you assume
those are the only two things in it.
