Many ways to produce biofuels by degrading biomass have been tried, with some more successful than others. One method that has not worked is to treat bacterial biomass with aqueous solutions of sodium hypochlorite (NaClO) to try to digest the complex biomolecules present. In an attempt to research this process further, a solution is prepared by dissolving 45.0 g of NaClO in enough water to produce exactly 750 mL of solution. What is the molarity of the solution?

Strategy To obtain molarity we need two quantities—moles of solute and liters of solution. Neither of these quantities is given directly in the question, but both can be obtained readily from information given. We must use the molar mass of NaClO to convert from mass to moles and convert the volume from milliliters to liters. Then we can use the definition of molarity to obtain the molarity of the solution.