Determining The Concentration Of Butanoic Acid

Based on calculations #7 made above for solving the molecular weight, it was identified that the unknown liquid was Butanoic acid: 88.1g/mol. Since the calculated value was 83.5 g/mol, it was assumed that Butanoic acid was the only solute out of all that were listed that shared a similar value. In reference to the results and data used for calculation the molecular weight (MW) for the unknown was successfully proven to match the accepted value of 88.1 g/mol. More specifically, this was evident due to the percent error that was calculated to be approximately 94.8 %. This value significantly shows how close the value is to the actual molecular weight. The reason why it may have not been completely 100 % may be explained due to the methods used in the experiment, such instrumental errors; which will be discussed further when explaining the source of errors.
Also, during part E of the experiment specific gravity was calculated. Both density and specific gravity describe mass and can be used to compare different substances; however, both are not identical measures due to the fact that density is an absolute value and is a property of matter that is defined as a ratio of mass to a unit of volume (g/mL), whereas, specific gravity also known as relative density is an expression of density in relation to a reference density, that is usually pure water, 1 g/mL. In addition, specific gravity is unit less. The reason for choosing density to solve for the molecular weight of the unknown liquid is because the units enable for cancellation in order to get a resulting unit of g/mol for molecular