The students were tasked with creating air bags using ziploc bags and two main reactants(Hydrochloric Acid and Sodium Bicarbonate) This script was written to quickly run through a host of stoichiometric and gas law equations to insure that my students work was both accurate and safe to implement within the scope of our lab. The reaction taking place is represented below.
- HCl + NaHCO3 >>> CO2 + H2O + NaCl The script begins by asking for the starting volume and mass of the reactants and then calculates the following values:
- Moles of both reactants
- Which reactant is the limiting reactant
- How many moles of the excess reactant will remain unreacted from the reaction
- The volume of CO2 gas that will be generated within the ziploc bag
- The relative pressure in "atm" that will be generated in the bag by the reaction(turns out that a pressure greater than 2 atm is not advisable)