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Student Exploration: Limiting Reactants

This document discusses identifying limiting reactants in chemical reactions. It introduces the concepts of reactants, products, limiting reactants, and chemical formulas using the example of hydrogen and oxygen reacting to form water. Students use an online simulation to determine the limiting reactant by setting the numbers of reactants and observing which one is used up first during the reaction.

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aef
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Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
672 views

Student Exploration: Limiting Reactants

This document discusses identifying limiting reactants in chemical reactions. It introduces the concepts of reactants, products, limiting reactants, and chemical formulas using the example of hydrogen and oxygen reacting to form water. Students use an online simulation to determine the limiting reactant by setting the numbers of reactants and observing which one is used up first during the reaction.

Uploaded by

aef
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Name: ______________________________________ Date: ________________________

Student Exploration: Limiting Reactants

Vocabulary: chemical equation, chemical formula, chemical reaction, coefficient, limiting


reactant, molecule, product, reactant, subscript

Prior Knowledge Questions (Do these BEFORE using the Gizmo.)


Imagine you and your friends are making hot dogs. A complete hot dog consists of a wiener and
a bun. At the store, you buy four packages of eight wieners and three bags of 10 buns.

1. How many total hot dogs can you make? ________________________________________

2. Which ingredient limited the number of hot dogs you could make? ____________________

3. Which ingredient will you have leftovers of? ______________________________________

Gizmo Warm-up
Just as ingredients can be put together to make a new food,
substances can combine during a chemical reaction to produce
new substances. The substances that undergo change are
called reactants. The new substances are products.

Sometimes during a chemical reaction, one type of reactant will


be used up before the other reactants. This reactant is the
limiting reactant. Using the Limiting Reactants Gizmo™, you
can determine which reactant is limiting in various scenarios.

To begin, make sure H2 + O2 becomes H2O is selected. The small “2” in H2, O2, and H2O is a
subscript. Subscripts represent the number of atoms in a molecule.

1. Use the sliders to set the number of O2 molecules and H2 molecules to two.

A. How many hydrogen molecules (H2) are there? _______ Hydrogen atoms? _______

B. How many oxygen molecules (O2) are there? _______ Oxygen atoms? _______

2. How many H2O molecules do you think will form when these four molecules react? _______

3. Click Play ( ). How many H2O molecules actually formed? _______


Get the Gizmo ready:
Activity A:
Make sure H2 + O2 becomes H2O is selected.
Water reaction
Click Reset ( ).

Goal: Identify a limiting reactant.

1. Count: H2O is the chemical formula for water. In order to produce a single molecule of

water, how many hydrogen atoms are needed? _______ Oxygen atoms? _______

2. Predict: Set the number of O2 molecules to five and the number of H2 molecules to eight.

A. How many oxygen atoms are present? _______ Hydrogen atoms? _______

B. How many water molecules could form from these reactants? _______

C. After the molecules react, which reactant will be left over? _____________________

D. Which reactant will be the limiting reactant? _____________________

E. Click Play and wait until Reaction complete is shown. What happened? _________

___________________________________________________________________

3. Test: Click Reset. Set the number of O2 molecules to 10.

A. How many hydrogen molecules (H2) will be needed for there to be no excess

reactants? ______ Use the slider to set the number of H2 molecules to this value.

B. How many water molecules will be formed? _______

C. Click Play. What happened? ____________________________________________

4. Challenge yourself: Run the Gizmo with five O2 molecules and nine H2 molecules.

A. How many of each molecule do you think will be produced by this reaction?

O2: _______ H2: _______ H2O: _______

B. Click Play. How many were actually produced? O2: _____ H2: _____ H2O: _____

C. How do you explain this result? _________________________________________

___________________________________________________________________

___________________________________________________________________

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