The Environmental Protection Agency has set the limit for arsenic in drinking water at 0.010 ppm. To what volume would you need to dilute 1.5 L of water containing 5.0 ppm arsenic to reach the acceptable limit?

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Welcome back everyone. Manganese is the second most common metal in drinking water. To what volume should a 2.50 liter sample of drinking water containing 8.35 parts per million. Manganese be diluted to meet the acceptable limit of 0.500 parts per million. We're going to need to determine the volume of the diluted sample by using our dilution equation in which the final or rather initial concentration of our solution C one multiplied by its initial volume is equal to the final concentration of our solution multiplied by its final volume. So that C one times V one equal to C two times V two. We're going to need to solve for the final volume of the sample once diluted, meaning we would divide both sides to isolate for V two. So we're going to divide by the final concentration C two on both sides. And that would give us that the final volume is going to equal the initial concentration of the solution multiplied by its initial volume divided by the final concentration plugging in our nodes. We have the initial concentration of the solution being a total of 8.35 parts per million of manganese, which is then multiplied by the initial volume. In this case of drinking water given as 2. liters. And so this is then divided by the final concentration of manganese which will have an acceptable limit from the prompt as 0.500 parts per million of manganese. So canceling out our units of parts per million, we're left with liters as the final unit of volume. And this will result in the volume of drinking water that should be diluted being a value of 417.5 liters, which we can round to three significant figures as liters. And so our final answer is going to be that the final volume that the sample should be diluted to is going to be 418 liters. I hope that this made sense and let us know if you have any questions.

The Environmental Protection Agency has set the limit for arsenic in drinking water at 0.010 ppm. To what volume would you need to dilute 1.5 L of water containing 5.0 ppm arsenic to reach the acceptable limit?

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Key Concepts

Dilution Principle

Parts Per Million (ppm)

Environmental Standards