Calculating The Composition of A Solution
If several known chemicals are dissolved in a single solution, the concentrations of each can be calculated using a light absorption analysis. First, the mass attenuation coefficients of each individual solute or solvent, ideally across a broad spectrum of wavelengths, must be measured or looked up. Second, the attenuation coefficient of the actual solution must be measured. Finally, using the formula
the spectrum can be fitted using as adjustable parameters. (Remember, and each are functions of wavelength.)
If there are N solutes or solvents, this procedure requires at least N measured wavelengths to create a solvable system of simultaneous equations, although using more wavelengths gives more reliable data.
Read more about this topic: Mass Attenuation Coefficient
Famous quotes containing the words calculating the, calculating, composition and/or solution:
“[The] elderly and timid single gentleman in Paris ... never drove down the Champs Elysees without expecting an accident, and commonly witnessing one; or found himself in the neighborhood of an official without calculating the chances of a bomb. So long as the rates of progress held good, these bombs would double in force and number every ten years.”
—Henry Brooks Adams (1838–1918)
“What our children have to fear is not the cars on the highways of tomorrow but our own pleasure in calculating the most elegant parameters of their deaths.”
—J.G. (James Graham)
“Those Dutchmen had hardly any imagination or fantasy, but their good taste and their scientific knowledge of composition were enormous.”
—Vincent Van Gogh (1853–1890)
“Who shall forbid a wise skepticism, seeing that there is no practical question on which any thing more than an approximate solution can be had? Is not marriage an open question, when it is alleged, from the beginning of the world, that such as are in the institution wish to get out, and such as are out wish to get in?”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)