Chem 109 Week 1 Exercises

Prepare written answers to the following exercises:

1. As a field agent, you must determine the cause of a disease outbreak in the Los Angeles, California, area.

You discover that the disease originates from contaminated halibut. You write a report to your supervisor, which includes a description of the physical dimensions of the fish (length and weight). Your supervisor asks that you send the fish and a report about the fish (length and weight) to the Pasteur Institute in Paris, France. Because France uses the metric system, you must convert the figures for length and weight.

Complete the following chart by converting the inches and pounds to centimeters and kilograms:

2. State the law of mass and energy conservation. Describe how you might demonstrate this law.

3. Adapted from Exercise 116 in Ch. 3 of Introductory Chemistry:

Global warming refers to the rise in average global temperature due to the increased concentration of certain gases, called greenhouse gases, in our atmosphere. Earth’s oceans, because of their high heat capacity, can absorb heat and therefore act to slow down global warming.

Imagine that you have a container of seawater. Assume that the volume of the container is 50 cm3 and that the density of the seawater is 1.03 g/cm3. Also, assume that the heat capacity of seawater is the same as that of water.

1. What is the volume of the container in cm3?

2. What is the weight of 1 cm3 of seawater in grams?

3. What is the weight of the seawater in the container in grams?

4. What is the formula for specific heat capacity?

5. What is the specific heat capacity of water?

Now, assume that the volume of Earth’s oceans is 137 x 107 km3.

4. Following similar steps from the previous question to obtain your answer, how much heat would be required to warm the seawater in the oceans by 1.0 °C?