Mole Ratios

How can one of America’s favorite foods help to explain stoichiometry problems? For a moment, think about a certain hamburger that is only made at a popular restaurant. This hamburger contains two burger patties, a secret sauce, lettuce, cheese pickles, and onions. All of these items lay in-between three hamburger buns. You could say that for every two burger patties, you need three buns, and five pickles (and, of course, all of the other ingredients) to make one hamburger.

In chemistry terms, the hamburger equation is written as:

If you consider the assembly of this hamburger like a reaction, then the numbers in the above reaction would represent the mole ratios. Just like the hamburger reaction, substances in a chemical reaction react on a mole to mole basis.