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Solutions


Converting between concentration, moles and volume


Many chemical reactions, including the vast majority of those that happen in the human body, occur in solution. Concentration is used to describe the composition of a solution. The concentration is the amount of stuff that is present. A highly concentrated solution contains a great deal of stuff and a very dilute solution contains very little! Their properties will be very different.

The concentration is defined as the amount of solute dissolved in a particular volume of the solvent.

molarity. Concentration is indicated using square brackets around the substance to which it refers to. It has units of mol L-1 or M. (Try not to confuse the molarity unit "M" with the symbol for molar mass "M" - italics are used to symbols and are not used to units.) When performing any calculations in science, an appreciation of the accuracy and significance of the measurements is vital - just ask an athlete under suspicion of taking performance enhancing drugs. If you are unfamilar with the proper way to handle signficant figures, read the iChem online tutorial (identical to the E9 week 4 pre-laboratory information)

Dealing with concentrations is very important and you will do so many times. There are three possible scenarios:
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