A silver-copper alloy had a mass of 0.1264g. When the alloy was dissolved in nitric acid and the silver precipitated as silver chloride, the precipitate had a mass of 0.1375g. Calculate the percent of silver in the alloy.
So, how would you do this? Is it possible to use moles to find the answer?
Use the RAMs for silver and chlorine to find the mass (M_Ag) of silver in the precipitate by simple proportion.
The percentage is then
M_Ag x100%/0.1264
Yes, it is possible to use moles to find the answer. To calculate the percent of silver in the alloy, we need to determine the masses of both silver and copper in the alloy and then calculate the ratio of silver mass to total alloy mass.
First, let's calculate the mass of silver in the alloy. We know that the mass of the precipitated silver chloride is 0.1375g. Since silver chloride is a 1:1 ratio of silver to chloride, the mass of silver in the precipitate is also 0.1375g.
Next, we need to find the mass of the alloy before it was dissolved. We are given that the mass of the alloy was 0.1264g.
Now, to calculate the percent of silver in the alloy, we can use the formula:
Percent of silver = (mass of silver / mass of alloy) * 100
Substituting the values we found:
Percent of silver = (0.1375g / 0.1264g) * 100
Calculating this gives:
Percent of silver = 108.82%
Therefore, the percent of silver in the alloy is approximately 108.82%.
In summary, we used the masses of the precipitated silver chloride and the original alloy to calculate the percent of silver in the alloy by finding the ratio of silver mass to total alloy mass.