How many atoms are in 9.35 moles of lithium?

Check the final answer first, then review the worked steps.

Problem

How many atoms are in 9.35 moles of lithium?

Answer

$5.63 \times 10^{24}$ atoms

Step-by-step solution

  1. Identify the given information: We are given the number of moles of lithium, which is $9.35$ moles. We need to find the number of atoms in this amount of lithium.
  1. Recall Avogadro's number: Avogadro's number is the number of constituent particles (usually atoms or molecules) that are contained in one mole of a substance. It is approximately $6.022 \times 10^{23}$ particles per mole.

3. Set up the calculation: To find the number of atoms, we multiply the number of moles by Avogadro's number.
Number of atoms = (Number of moles) $\times$ (Avogadro's number)

4. Perform the calculation:
Number of atoms = $9.35 \text{ moles} \times 6.022 \times 10^{23} \text{ atoms/mole}$
Number of atoms = $(9.35 \times 6.022) \times 10^{23}$ atoms
Number of atoms = $56.3057 \times 10^{23}$ atoms

5. Express the answer in scientific notation: To express the answer in standard scientific notation, we need to have one non-zero digit before the decimal point. We adjust the number $56.3057$ to $5.63057$ and increase the exponent by one.
Number of atoms = $5.63057 \times 10^{24}$ atoms

6. Round to the appropriate number of significant figures: The given number of moles ($9.35$) has three significant figures. Avogadro's number is often used with four significant figures ($6.022$). Therefore, we should round our final answer to three significant figures.
Number of atoms $\approx 5.63 \times 10^{24}$ atoms