Determining Molecular Weight
Source/Author: Daniel Burkett, US Science Teacher
January 22, 2021
Upper School honors chemistry students have been learning about the behavior of gases. This week the students used the Dumas method to determine the molecular weight of an unknown volatile liquid. By carefully heating the liquid to its boiling point, the resulting vapor's volume, temperature and mass could be determined experimentally. By applying the ideal gas law with these quantities, the molecular weight, a fundamental property of a pure compound, was determined experimentally.
Pictured are Matthew White '23 (left) and Matthew Sheppard '23 (right).
