Stoichiometry

Stoichiometry is known as the quantitative relationship between various products and reactants in a chemical reaction. There are many ways one can stoichiometry in his/her advantage. If you start off with a known amount of reactant, stoichiometry can definitely be used to make a prediction to the amounts of the future product that will be formed. And in the other side, if you has a desired amount of product want, you can use stoichiometry to predict of on how much reactant you will need to carry on the reaction. Stoichiometry can definitely be named the center of many if not most of the calculations executed in chemistry.
There is a number of compounds that contain oxygen that can be decomposed by exposing the compound to heat. An example is potassium chlorate (KClO3), it can be heated up and as a result the oxygen that was in the compound will be driven off, thus …show more content…
The amount of oxygen released can be determined by looking at the difference between the mass before and after the heat. If the mass of the released oxygen is known, then stoichiometry can be used to find out how many grams of KClO3 decomposed. This makes possible for the calculation of the total amount of KClO3 and KCl. The calculation can only be valid if only KCl remains in the end, which means that all of the oxygen has been released from the original solution, KClO3.
The thermal decomposition of potassium chlorate is very slow. In order for this reaction for be observable in a laboratory setting, one must add a catalyst and the reaction will then speed up to allow for observation. Manganese dioxide (MnO2) is the catalyst that will be used in this experiment. The thermal decomposition of KClO3 using MnO2 as a catalyst can also be represented by the following equation:
2KClO_3 (s)+ MnO¬_2+Heat →2KCl (s)+3O_2