Consider the following gases, all at STP: Ne, SF₆, N₂, CH₄. (d) Which one has the highest total molecular volume relative to the space occupied by the gas?

Video transcript

Hi everyone for this problem, it reads which one of the following four gasses is expected to have the lowest total molecular volume compared to the total occupied volume. We have nitrogen gas, nitrogen dioxide, sulfur dioxide and boron try fluoride. And we want to know which one is going to have the lowest total molecular volume. Okay, so molecular volume for gasses depends on the molecular size and complexity. So for this problem we're going to want to look at the number of atoms. So the lower the number of atoms, the lower the molecular volume. So let's go ahead and write out our four gasses. So we have nitrogen gas, we have nitrogen dioxide, we have sulfur dioxide and we have boron try fluoride. So if we look at the number of atoms here and count them up, we see for nitrogen gas we have two for nitrogen dioxide, we have three for sulfur dioxide, we have three. And for boron try fluoride. There is four. Okay, so here we see that the smallest molecule is going to be the one with the lowest number of atoms. And so we see here that our smallest molecule is going to be our nitrogen gas and because it is the one with the smallest number of atoms, that means it's going to have the lowest molecular volume. So out of the four options here, the gas that is expected to have the lowest total molecular volume is nitrogen gas. That's the end of this problem. I hope this was helpful