Sodium reacts with oxygen in air to form two compounds:
sodium ox...

Question

Sodium reacts with oxygen in air to form two compounds:
sodium oxide and sodium peroxide. In forming sodium oxide,
23.0 g of sodium combines with 8.0 g of hydrogen. In forming
sodium peroxide, 23.0 g of sodium combines with 16.0 g
of oxygen. (b) What fundamental law does this experiment
demonstrate?

Accepted Answer

Everyone in this example, we're told that when phosphorus burns and chlorine gas, a mixture of two chloride compounds are produced, phosphorous tri chloride and phosphorus Penta chloride were told that a 7.45 g of phosphorous reacts with 25.6 g of chlorine to form phosphorous tri chloride. Where on the other hand, 7.45 g of phosphorus reacts with 42.7 g of chlorine gas to form phosphorus Penta chloride. And we need to explain which fundamental law is demonstrated by this observation. So what we should recognize is that we have two different mole ratios. Our first mole ratio is between our phosphorus atoms. Where for the first Adam formed, we have 7.45g of phosphorus That is reacting. And for our second compound forming we also have 7.45 g of phosphorus reacting. And when we divide these two out we get a ratio equal to one. And when we take our mole ratio of our chlorine atoms for our first compound we have according to the prompt 25.6 g of chlorine which for the second compound we will now have 42.7 g of chlorine that forms. And when we take the And so as you can see, we have whole number ratios produced from these masses of our atoms phosphorus and chlorine. And so therefore we can say because we have The whole number ratios here which are 1 - two ratio. This is going to correspond to the law of multiple proportions. And we should recall that the law of multi proportions corresponds to the same two elements, forming More than one compound where different masses of one element combine with the same mass of another element and yield a ratio of small hole numbers. And that is exactly what we've displayed here in our calculation above. So this will complete our example as our final answer being the law of multiple proportions, which is the fundamental law observed here. So this completes this example. If you have any questions, please leave them down below and I will see everyone in the next practice video.

Watch next