Molarity
Definition
Molarity is a measure of the concentration of a solute in a solution, or of any chemical species in terms of amount of substance in a given volume.
Analogy
Think about making lemonade. If you add one scoop of lemonade powder to one cup of water, that's like having a 1 molar (M) solution. If you add two scoops to the same amount of water, it becomes more concentrated - now it's a 2M solution. The more scoops (solute) you add per cup (volume), the higher the molarity.
Related terms
Molality: This is another way to express concentration, but instead of volume, it uses mass. It's defined as moles of solute per kilogram of solvent.
Normality: This measures concentration in terms equivalent weight per liter. It’s often used when discussing acid-base reactions.
Solute: This is what gets dissolved into something else. In our lemonade example, the powder would be the solute.
"Molarity" appears in:
Study guides (6)
Practice Questions (5)
- What is the molarity of 100mL HCl if it completely reacts with 50 mL of 2.0 M LiOH in order to completely neutralize the solution?
- Why is the common ion replaced with the molarity already present (ex. 3M of a salt) instead of 3 +/- nx (n represents the ratio multiplier)?
- Which of the following statements about molarity at the equivalence point is true?
- What is the molarity of a solution that contains 5.00 g of NaCl in 250.0 mL of solution?
- A solution contains 0.500 moles of glucose (C6H12O6) in 500.0 mL of solution. What is the molarity of the solution?
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