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Lesson 9 · Percent yield
The honest ratio
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The honest ratio

% yield=mamt×100\%\,\text{yield} = \dfrac{m_a}{m_t} \times 100 — what you got, over what the paper promised, times one hundred. Keep the flask's number on TOP. Both entries are masses of the same product, so the grams cancel completely: a percent yield is a pure number, and it travels without units, like the coefficients of friction do in physics.

The classic slip is flipping the ratio — and it diagnoses itself: a yield past 100 %. Stoichiometry never pays out more than it predicts, so a 125 % yield is not a triumph — it is your fraction upside down (or, at the bench, a product still wet with solvent, quietly padding the balance). Above 100, suspect the ratio first and the drying oven second.

mtheoreticalmactual% yield

% yield=mactualmtheoretical×100%\%\,\text{yield} = \frac{m_{\text{actual}}}{m_{\text{theoretical}}} \times 100\%

  • % yield\%\,\text{yield}= Percent yield (concentration)
  • mactualm_{\text{actual}}= Actual yield (mass obtained) (mass)
  • mtheoreticalm_{\text{theoretical}}= Theoretical yield (mass predicted) (mass)
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