Unit conversions

Getting started
1. Convert into SI units or SI-derived units (see table 1-1 and 1-2 in Harris or the cheat sheet, on the
topic of Harris, if you encounter difficulties with this or other tutorials reading the book can be a big
help)
a. 16.5 oz
E-4 has the same meaning as x 10-4. It
b. 12 acres
is faster to type, and it is what is
c. 480 ˚F
generally used in excel and other
d. 24 cups
computer programs
e. 633 nm
f. 1.1 atm
g. 1.1E-4 horsepower
h. 314 erg v

2. Chemical Concentrations
Give the concentration of the following solutions in M
a. 15 μg NaOH in 10 ml of water
b. 10 g of methanol in water. The total volume is 250 mL.

3. Adipic acid
You are really hungry and decide to eat 200g of the cake in front of you. It contains 200 mass ppm of
the food additive E355, adipic acid (C6H10O4). You also drink 200 mL of a drink with 20 mM of E355. Do
you exceed the recommended daily dose of 5 mg/kg if you weigh 70 kg?

4. Units in spectroscopy
You will see a lot of different units being used in spectroscopy. To get a feeling for those units convert
633 nm to
a) Electronvolts (eV) (if you are unsure how to approach such an exercise, try for a few minutes then
you can consult the solution at the end of the tutorial)
b) Joules (J)
c) Erg
d) Wavenumbers (cm-1)
e) Hertz (Hz)
f) Kcal mol-1
g) Hartree

5. Lightyear
Express 1 light year in meters, feet and miles

6. Bad deal?
You bought a ‘silver’ necklace from Marktplaats (a Dutch site for selling secondhand stuff) and now
you doubt whether it is actually made of silver. To test it you determine the weight of the necklace to
be 225 g. By water displacement the volume of the necklace was calculated to be 25.3 mL. Is the
necklace of pure silver? If not, what metal could it be made of?

7. Soda
The label on a soft drink bottle gives the volume in two units: 2.0 L and 67.6 fl oz. Use this information
to derive a conversion factor between the two units.
 8. Air
In an air sample at 25˚C the volume percentage carbon dioxides is 0.041. At this temperature the
density of air is 1.41 kg/m3. Calculate the mass percentage of CO2 in air.

Expected level
9. Titration
25 cm3 of a sample of vinegar (CH3COOH) was pipetted into a volumetric flask and the volume was
made up to 250 cm3. This solution was placed in a burette and 13.9 cm3 were required to neutralise 25
cm3 of 0.1 mol dm-3 NaOH. Calculate the molarity of the original vinegar solution and its concentration
in g dm-3, given that it reacts with NaOH in a 1:1 ratio.

10. Ideal Gas Law

At 25 oC and 100 kPa a gas occupies a volume of 20 dm3. Use the ideal gas law to calculate the new
temperature of the gas if
a) the volume is decreased to 10 dm3 at constant pressure.
b) the pressure is decreased to 50 kPa at constant volume.

11. Composition of the earth

The two most common rocks exposed on the surface of the earth are granite (continental crust) and
basalt (oceanic crust). From the travel times of earthquake waves it is known that the density of the
earth is 5.5 g/cm3.

a. You take a 1 cubic ft piece of granite and weigh it at home. Unfortunately, your scale is in
empirical units. The piece of granite weights 171 lb. Could the earth be made only of granite?
b. You have also taken a cubic block of basalt (sides are 4.0 inch) to your home. It weighs 116
ounces. Could the earth be made entirely of granite and basalt?

You should have worked yourself to this point during the tutorial session, if you still
have time left continue going over the following questions.
In the upcoming weeks some of you will have their first lab work experiences. It is advised that you
read section 2-6, in Quantative chemical analysis by Harris, focussing on serial dilution and
micropipets. In general the whole chapter might alleviate some anxiety and help you to have more
confidence in the lab.

12. Boiling an egg

The Arrhenius equation describes the relation between the rate constant, the activation energy and
the temperature.
𝐸𝑎
𝑘 = 𝐴𝑒 −𝑅𝑇

It takes about 3.0 minutes to cook a hard-boiled egg in Groningen at 100 ˚C, but at the higher altitude
in Denver, where water boils at 197.6 ˚F, the cooking time is 4.5 minutes. Use this information to
estimate the activation energy for the coagulation of egg albumin protein.

13. Serial Dilution

You take 1.00 mL of a 5.45 M solution and dilute it 10 times (tube 1).
a. How much solvent did you use?

Now you take 1 mL of diluted solution and add solvent until you have 20 mL of solution (tube 2).

b. What is the final concentration in tube 2?

 c. What is the total dilution factor?
14. csg units
The centimeter–gram–second system of units is a variant of the metric unit system and may be found
in older publications (before 1960). Figure out the expressions of the following units in centimeters,
grams and seconds and then convert to the SI units. See example:
a. an energy of 32 erg.
Energy is given as units of mass x length2 x time-2, so in cgs units this would be
g cm2 s-2. Converting to SI units gives:
2
2 −2
10−3 𝑘𝑔 10−2 𝑚
32𝑒𝑟𝑔 = 32𝑔𝑐𝑚 𝑠 ⋅ ⋅( ) = 32 ⋅ 10−7 𝑘𝑔𝑚2 𝑠 −2 = 32 ⋅ 10−7 𝐽
1𝑔 1𝑐𝑚

b. The gravitational acceleration, g = 980.665 Gal

c. A force of 15000 dyne
d. A pressure of 10 Ba (barad is an old unit of pressure)
e. Plancks constant, h= 6.62607015×10−27 erg s

Challenging questions (for the brave and bored)

Every tutorial will include some challenging questions. These questions are a real challenge and are at a higher
level than what we expect you to know. Occasionally these questions will contain material not covered in the
lectures. Feel free to look up any additional information you think you need, work together, and bother your TA
if needed. Have fun :)

15. Ideal Gas Constant

Use the ideal gas law, 𝑃𝑉 = 𝑛𝑅𝑇, to find a value for R in SI base units.
Now instead of using SI base units, us the ideal gas law to find R in:
a. Atm ft3 lb mol-1 ˚R-1 (˚R stands for the Rankine scale)
b. L bar K-1 mol-1
c. Kcal K-1 mol-1
d. Check whether your values are correct by directly converting all values for R into each other.

16. Diamond
a. The largest single rough diamond ever found, the Cullinan Diamond, weighed 3106 carats.
One carat is equivalent to the mass of 0.20 grams. What is the mass of this diamond in
milligrams? Weight in pounds?
b. The crystal structure of diamond is given below. For now, you don’t need to know much
about unit cells and crystal structure, but it is useful to know that every atom placed in a
corner has 1/8 of its volume in the unit cell and every atom place on the face of the cube has
½ of its volume inside the unit cell. How many atoms are there in the unit cell?
 c. Given that the unit cell is a cube with 3.567 Å side length and diamond is made entirely of
carbon atoms (12.01 amu), what is the density of diamond in kg/m3?

Extra practice exercises

From Quantitative Chemical Analysis by Daniel C. Harris chapter 1:

unit conversions:

1-5; 1-6

preparing solutions:

1-32
Solution for exercise 4 a) of getting started