A virus has a mass of * 9.010-12mg and an oil tanker has a mass of * 3.0107kg. Use this information to answer the questions below. Be sure your answers have the correct number of significant digits. What is the mass of one mole of viruses in grams? How many moles of viruses have a mass equal to the mass of an oil tanker?

5.426 x 10⁹ g

5.55 mol

Explanation:

This type of problems involve the use of proportions, and the use of conversion of units to solve them.

In the first part we have to determine the mass in grams of a mole of virus, so we have to convert the mass to grams and multiply by avogadro's number.

9.010x 10⁻¹² mg x (1 g / 1000 mg) = 9.010 x 10⁻¹⁵ g

mass of 1 mol viruses:

9.010 x 10⁻¹⁵ g / virus x (6.022 x 10²³ virus/mol) = 5.426 x 10⁹ g / mol

(Note we rounded to 4 significant figures since 9.010 has 4 significant figures.)

For the second part convert the mass of the oil tanker to grams, and make use of the previous result to determine the # of moles of viruses which have the same mass.

mass oil tanker = 3.01 x 10⁷ Kg x (1000 g / Kg) = 3.01 x 10¹⁰ g

3.01 x 10¹⁰ g x (1 mol virus / 5.426 x 10⁹ g) = 5.55 mol

(Note here we rounded to three significant figures since in the multiplication we have 3.01 with three significant figures.)

The result is amazing and it is due to the very small mass of the virus. Imagine only 5.55 mol of virus in the same mass as that of an oil tanker!