question is in description, can you please explain how you got the answer

Question

In decomposition reaction, calcium chlorate breaks up to produce calcium chloride and oxygen gas.  

Write the equation for this reaction and balance it.

How many moles of calcium chlorate must decompose to produce 19.5 moles of calcium chloride?

Answer 1

Hi Aaron,

The decomposition of calcium chlorate is as follows:

Ca(ClO3)2 --> CaCl2 + 3 O2 (g)

To determine the moles of reactant required to produce19.5 moles of calcium chloride,

19.5 mol CaCl2 (mol Ca(ClO3)2/mol CaCl2) = 19.5 mol Ca(ClO3)2

The stoichiometry is one-to-one.

Best,

Randall

Answer 2

This question asks you to know three things. 1) How to write chemical formulas based on the name. 2) How to balance chemical equations. 3) How to use stoichiometry.

1) Unfortunately, to know chemical formulas you need to memorize a lot of ions. I found this video from Crash Course very helpful. https://youtu.be/mlRhLicNo8Q

calcium chlorate: Ca(ClO₃)₂

calcium chloride: CaCl₂

oxygen gas: O₂

2) Write and balance the equation.

We know Ca(ClO₃)₂ --> CaCl₂ + O₂(g)

Balanced equation: Ca(ClO₃)₂ --> CaCl₂ + 3O₂(g)

3) Use stoichiometry to determine the number of moles of calcium chlorate needed to make 195 moles of calcium chloride.

For these stoichiometry problems, I like to first write out all the unit conversions, then write fill out the numbers. See if you can fill out the numbers based on the unit conversion.

Work and answer shown in the image attached here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1GrYlVOXXvJAgDuLEgbOJEQsL30fH6tiL/view?usp=sharing