# Oxygen required to burn carbon [closed]

What volume of oxygen at standard temperature and pressure (STP) is required to burn $2.4 \,\rm{g}$ of carbon to completion?

No one has answered this but it seems within my high school chemistry.

Look up the definition of mole and you should be able to easily figure out how many moles of carbon you have. The quantity $\pu{2.4 g}$ seems to be have been chosen to make this step easy. It also suggests that we are assuming that the atomic mass of carbon is 12 (so we are ignoring the small amount of other isotopes).

I expect that you know that the formula of Carbon Dioxide is $\ce{CO2}$. I presume that we can ignore Carbon Monoxide as we are told that the carbon burns completely.

Now you can calculate how many moles of $\ce{O2}$ are required to burn a mole of $\ce{C}$. This is very easy.

Finally, look up molar volume to calculate the volume of this quantity of oxygen.

• Hi Badjohn, and welcome to our site! You actually did a decent job of answering without spoonfeeding the answer, but the reason we don't answer these questions is they're just closed as homework. Ideally someone would comment under the question, but no one has up to now. We also load the mhchem package with MathJax, so you'd be able to correctly format chemical formulas. – M.A.R. Oct 31 '17 at 12:55
• Check out the \pu{} and the \ce{} command. – M.A.R. Oct 31 '17 at 12:56
• Thanks. I recognised it as probable homework so I resisted just giving the answer. So, the culture here is just to ignore such questions entirely? I am primarily active in maths and usually just browse here. So, I am familiar with MathJax but not a chemistry extension. I'll have a look. – badjohn Oct 31 '17 at 13:19