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Stoichiometry Lab Report Limiting Reagent

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Introduction Stoichiometry measures the amount of reactants and products in a chemical reaction by comparing their ratios in an equation. Because, matter cannot be destroyed, the same number of moles of an element that go into a reaction must be present in the product. Sometimes the proportions of two reacting molecules aren’t exact. When this happens, there is a limiting reagent and an excess reagent. The limiting reagent dictates how much of the product can be created, or “limits” the product. The opposite of this is the excess reagent. This is the reagent that has an “excess” of unreacted molecules. The amount of each product created can be determined by the amount of each reactant. The theoretical yield is the expected amount based on calculation using molar mass. The actual yield is what is actually recorded when the reaction takes place. The percent yield is a comparison between the actual and theoretical yields. For data …show more content…

The resulting Ca(OH)2 solid was filtered from the NaCl liquid. The NaCl was then tested, in equal proportions, with NaOH and CaCl2 to determine the excess reagent and the limiting reagent. As different amounts of CaCl2 were added, the expected results did not match the actual results. This could be due to a number of errors in conducting the experiment such as inaccurate measurements. One point where the data does slightly reflect the expected outcomes is in the mass of precipitate recorded. These values do appear to plateau though the recorded values are much higher than the calculated ones. The actual yield did not reflect the theoretical yield accurately. Though both did increase, there is a significant difference between the values. From this experiment, concepts about reactions were learned including limiting and excess reagents as well as the disparities between actual data and experimental

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