A typical task in physics is to calculate the volumes of various substances under certain environmental conditions. One such substance is mercury, a metal with unique physical properties. In this article, we consider ways to solve the following task in physics: how much does 100 mol of mercury occupy?
What is mercury?
This is a chemical element under the 80th number in the periodic table. His neighbor on the left is gold. Mercury is indicated by the symbol Hg (Hydrargyrum). The Latin name can be translated as "liquid silver". Indeed, at room temperature, the element exists in the form of a liquid, which has a silver color.
The element in question is the only liquid metal. This fact is due to the unique electronic structure of its atoms. It is extremely stable due to fully filled electronic shells. In this regard, mercury is similar to inert gases. The stability of an atom leads to the difficulty of detaching an electron from it. The latter means that there is no metallic bond between the Hg atoms, they interact with each other only due to weak van der Waals forces.
Mercury already melts at a temperature of -39 o C. The resulting liquid is very heavy. Its density is 13,546 kg / m 3 , which is 13.5 times greater than that of distilled water. This density value is due to the large atomic mass of the element, which is 200.59 amu
Further in the article we will answer the question of how much 100 mol of mercury occupy. The solution to this problem can be carried out in two different ways.
The solution to the problem in the first way
To answer the question: βHow much does 100 mol of mercury occupy?β, One should turn to the corresponding experimental data. It is a molar volume. Such data can be found in the reference literature. So, in one of the tables we find that at 293 K (20 o C) the molar volume of the liquid metal in question is 14.81 cm 3 / mol. In other words, 1 mol of Hg atoms occupies a volume of 14.81 cm 3 . To answer the question of the problem, just multiply this number by 100.
Thus, we get the answer: the volume of 100 mol of mercury is equal to 1481 cm 3 , which practically corresponds to 1.5 liters.
Note that we used a molar volume value of 20 o C. However, the answer obtained will not change much if mercury is examined at any other temperature, since its thermal expansion coefficient is very small.
The second way to solve
To answer the question of how much 100 mol of mercury occupy, you can use a different approach from the previous one. To do this, we need to use the density and molar mass data for the metal in question.
The initial formula for solving the problem will be the following expression:
Ο = m / V.
Where can I express the value of V:
V = m / Ο.
Mass n = 100 mol of a substance is defined as follows:
m = n * M.
Where M is the mass of one mole of mercury. Then the working formula for determining the volume is written in the following form:
V = n * M / Ο.
The molar mass value we have already cited above, it is numerically equal to the atomic mass, only expressed in grams per mole (M = 200.59 g / mol). The density of mercury is 13,546 kg / m 3 or 13.546 g / cm 3 . Substitute these values ββin the formula, we get:
V = n * M / Ο = 100 * 200.59 / 13.546 = 1481 cm 3 .
As you can see, we got exactly the same result as in the previous method of solving the problem.