Expert: Bobby Soltani - 8/13/2004

Question
I need to figure out how many litres I use to mix a 16 milimoles of a certain substance for a chemistry class. I have 16mmol for every Litre to the -1 power. It looks something like this: 16mmol\L-1. I do not know how to raise a Litre to the negative one power. Can you help me?

Answer
Hi Michael,

If you have 16 millimoles of a substance and you want to make a solution that is 16 millimoles/Liter, you need to add 1 Liter of water.  This  will make the solution (16 millimoles)/(1 liter) = 16 millimoles/Liter.

Let me know if you have questions.

Bobby