What is the mole fraction of solute in a 3.26 m aqueous solution?
To determine the mole fraction of solute in a solution, we need to know the number of moles of the solute and the total number of moles in the solution.
In this case, we are given that the solution is a 3.26 m aqueous solution. The "m" in "3.26 m" stands for molarity, which is a measure of the concentration of a solution, defined as the number of moles of solute per liter of solution.
Since the solution is aqueous, water (H2O) is the solvent and the solute is another substance dissolved in the water.
To find the mole fraction of the solute, we need to know the number of moles of the solute and the total number of moles in the solution.
To calculate the number of moles of the solute, we need the molarity and the volume of the solution.
The formula to calculate the number of moles (n) is:
n = Molarity x Volume
Let's assume that the volume of the solution is 1 liter. We can multiply the molarity by the volume to find the number of moles of the solute.
So, if the molarity is 3.26 mol/L and the volume is 1 L, we can calculate:
n = (3.26 mol/L) x (1 L) = 3.26 moles
Therefore, the number of moles of the solute in a 1 liter solution is 3.26 moles.
To find the mole fraction, we also need to know the number of moles of the solvent, which is water in this case.
The mole fraction (X) is calculated as the number of moles of the solute divided by the total number of moles in the solution (solute + solvent).
So, to calculate the mole fraction, we first need the number of moles of the solvent.
The molarity of water is approximately 55.5 mol/L. Assuming a volume of 1 liter, we can calculate:
n (water) = (55.5 mol/L) x (1 L) = 55.5 moles
Now we can calculate the mole fraction using the formula:
X(solute) = n(solute) / (n(solute) + n(water))
X(solute) = 3.26 moles / (3.26 moles + 55.5 moles)
X(solute) = 0.055 (rounded to three decimal places)
Therefore, the mole fraction of the solute in a 3.26 m aqueous solution is approximately 0.055.