Question #956b2

1 Answer
Feb 4, 2018

"33.37 kPa"33.37 kPa

Explanation:

The idea here is that the volume of a gas, VV, is proportional to the number of moles of gas, nn, present in the sample -> think Avogadro's Law here.

V prop nVn

The balloon is said to contain 22 parts helium gas to 11 part air, which implies that the volume of helium gas is twice as large as the volume of air.

Consequently, you can say that the balloon contains twice as many moles of helium gas than moles of air. In other words, if you take nn to be the number of moles of air, you can say that the balloon contains 2n2n moles of helium gas.

Mathematically, you can show that this is the case because

V_"He" prop n_"He" " " ->VHenHe for helium

V_"air" prop n_"air" " " ->Vairnair for air

gets you

V_"He"/V_"air" = n_"He"/n_"air"VHeVair=nHenair

And since you know that

V_"He" = 2 * V_"air"VHe=2Vair

you will end up with

n_"He" = (2 * color(red)(cancel(color(black)(V_"air"))))/color(red)(cancel(color(black)(V_"air"))) * n_"air"

n_"He" = 2 * n_"air"

color(white)(a/a)

Now, the partial pressure of a gas that's part of a gaseous mixture depends on the mole fraction of the gas in the mixture -> think Dalton's Law of Partial Pressures here.

The mole fraction of helium, chi_"He", is calculated by dividing the number of moles of helium by the total number of moles of gas present in the balloon.

Since we've said that for n moles of air, the balloon must contain 2n moles of helium, you can say that the total number of moles of gas will be

n + 2n = 3n

This means that you have

chi_"He" = (color(blue)(cancel(color(black)(n))) color(red)(cancel(color(black)("moles"))))/(3color(blue)(cancel(color(black)(n))) color(red)(cancel(color(black)("moles")))) = 1/3

The partial pressure of helium in the balloon will be

P_"He" = chi_ "he" * P_"total"

Here P_"total", the total pressure in the balloon, is equal to "100.1 kPa".

Plug in your values to find

color(darkgreen)(ul(color(black)(chi_"He"))) = 1/3 * "100.1 kPa" = color(radkgreen)(ul(color(black)("33.37 kPa")))

The answer is rounded to four sig figs, the number of sig figs you have for the total pressure in the balloon.