Question

Distinguish between molecular mass and molar mass.

Answer 1

Hint: The property which basically defines the physical state of the body is known as mass. The mass for a mole of atoms for an element is known as molar mass and the mass for a molecule is known as molecular mass.

Complete step by step answer:
Mass is basically a property of physical state for a body. It has various scientific uses in our daily life, and it is used to define gravitational force acting on an object and the resistance and many more scientific calculations are done with the help of mass. The term mass is also useful in chemistry but here we will discuss a very small quantity. In chemistry two types of masses are described, molecular mass and molar mass. As we can understand by their names that molecular mass refers to the mass of chemical molecules and the molar mass refers to the mass of a mole of atoms.
Some basic differences between molecular masses and molar masses are as follows:
The SI unit for the molar mass is gram per mole while the SI unit used for molecular mass is atomic mass unit or amu.
Molar mass is also known as molecular weight.
They differ in accuracy level of calculations, the molar mass is less accurate for higher calculations but the molecular mass is more accurate at higher calculations, this happens because molar mass can be in decimals while the molecular mass is always in integers.
Eg: Molar mass of oxygen is ${\text{15}}{\text{.994 g/mole}}$ , Molecular mass of calcium hydroxide is $74 {\text{amu}}$ .
So, these were some basic differences between molar mass and molecular mass.

Note: In chemistry some formulas are derived to calculate the molar mass and the molar mass. The formulas are as follows:
${\text{Molar mass = }}\dfrac{{{\text{mass of the substance(kg)}}}}{{{\text{amount of the substance(mol)}}}}$ ${\text{Molecular weight = }}\dfrac{{{\text{Mass of one molecule}}}}{{{\text{Mass of C - 12 atom}}}} \times \dfrac{1}{{12}}$