The Airbag Lab Report

Purpose: The purpose of this lab is to design a model airbag that is stable and uninflated until the reactants react.

Procedure: In able to calculate and find out how much sodium bicarbonate is needed; we need to find the volume of the Ziploc bag. To do this, we filled the bag up with water, zipped it, and poured it out into a graduated cylinder measuring the volume. The volume of the water is the same as the volume of carbon dioxide. We used this information along with the pressure and the temperature of the room given to calculate the number of moles of carbon dioxide to fill the bag using PV=nRT. With this information, we then converted the number of moles of carbon dioxide into grams of sodium bicarbonate. We also converted 0.50 M hydrochloric acid into mL to know the amount needed.
Materials: 1 Ziploc bag, 0.50 M HCl, baking soda, water
Data:
Results:
Summary: The carbon dioxide that is produced from the chemical reaction inflated the bag. When inflated, the bag should be firm but should not burst. After this experiment, I now understand how airbag works. It must have taken many experiments designing an airbag to make sure that it does not inflate by accident, inflate when there is an accident, does not produce harmful chemicals, and many other factors to consider.