A mixture of oxygen and argon gases at a total pressure of 851 mm Hg contains oxygen at a partial pressure of 449 mm Hg. If the gas mixture contains 5.98 grams of oxygen, how many grams of argon are present?

6.684g

Explanation:

Here, we can use the mole ratio of the gases to calculate.

We know that the mole ratio of the gases equate to their number of moles.

Firstly, we calculate the number of moles of the oxygen gas. The number of moles of the oxygen gas is equal to the mass of the oxygen gas divided by the molar mass of the oxygen gas. The molar mass of the oxygen gas is 32g/mol

Thus, the number of moles produced is 5.98/32 = 0.186875

Where do we move from here?

We know that if we place the partial pressure of oxygen over the total pressure, this would be equal to the number of moles of oxygen divided by the total number of moles. Now let's do this.

449/851 = 0.186875/n

n = (0.186875 * 851) / 449

n = 0.3542

Now we do the same for argon to get the number of moles of argon.

Firstly, we use dalton's partial pressure law to get the partial pressure of argon. In the simplest form, the partial pressure of argon is the total pressure minus the partial pressure of oxygen.

P = 851 - 449 = 402 mmHg

We now use the mole ratio relation.

402/851 = n/0.3542

n = (402 * 0.3542) / 851

n = 0.1673

Since we now know the number of moles of argon, we can use this multiplied by the atomic mass of argon to get the mass.

The atomic mass of argon is 39.948 amu

The mass is thus 39.948 * 0.1673 = 6.684g