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Chapter 2: Problem 2

State in your own words the law of constant composition.

Short Answer

Expert verified
Answer: The Law of Constant Composition states that a chemical compound always consists of the same elements combined in fixed proportions by mass, regardless of the source or the size of the sample.

Step by step solution

01

Definition of the Law of Constant Composition

The Law of Constant Composition, also known as the Law of Definite Proportions, states that a chemical compound always consists of the same elements combined in fixed proportions by mass, regardless of the source or the size of the sample.
02

Example

To better understand the law, let's consider an example. Water (H_2O) is a chemical compound that consists of hydrogen and oxygen. According to the Law of Constant Composition, any sample of water, whether it comes from a river, a laboratory, or a glacier, will always be composed of 2 hydrogen atoms and 1 oxygen atom. The proportion by mass will always remain constant. In this case, the proportion (in mass) is approximately 11% hydrogen and 89% oxygen.

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Most popular questions from this chapter

Each time you inhale, you take in about \(500 \mathrm{~mL}\) (two significant figures) of air, each milliliter of which contains \(2.5 \times 10^{19}\) molecules. In delivering the Gettysburg Address, Abraham Lincoln is estimated to have inhaled about 200 times. (a) How many molecules did Lincoln take in? (b) In the entire atmosphere, there are about \(1.1 \times 10^{44}\) molecules. What fraction of the molecules in the earth's atmosphere was inhaled by Lincoln at Gettysburg? (c) In the next breath that you take, how many molecules were inhaled by Lincoln at Gettysburg?

Write the formulas for the following molecules. (a) water (b) ammonia (c) hydrazine (d) sulfur hexafluoride (e) phosphorus pentachloride

Which statements are true? (a) Neutrons have neither mass nor charge. (b) Isotopes of an element have an identical number of protons. (c) C-14 and N-14 have identical neutron/proton (n/p \(^{+}\) ) ratios. (d) The vertical columns in a periodic table are referred to as "groups." (e) When an atom loses an electron, it becomes positively charged.

How do the isotopes of Cu-63 and Cu-65 differ from each other? Write nuclear symbols for both.

Calculate the average density of a single Al-27 atom by assuming that it is a sphere with a radius of \(0.143 \mathrm{~nm}\). The masses of a proton, electron, and neutron are \(1.6726 \times 10^{-24} \mathrm{~g}, 9.1094 \times 10^{-28} \mathrm{~g}\), and \(1.6749 \times 10^{-24} \mathrm{~g}\), respectively. The volume of a sphere is \(4 \pi r^{3} / 3\), where \(r\) is its radius. Express the answer in grams per cubic centimeter. The density of aluminum is found experimentally to be \(2.70 \mathrm{~g} / \mathrm{cm}^{3} .\) What does that suggest about the packing of aluminum atoms in the metal?
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