Limiting Ingredients and Cupcake Yields

Brian Dempsey / Simon Yang

Limiting Reactant

• There are 36 un-iced cupcakes.• Each cupcake gets 2 tablespoons of icing.• You have 3 tubs of icing, and each tub of icing

contains about 26 tablespoons.

What is the limiting reactant?

Limiting Reactant Cont.

• 78 tablespoons of icing total.

Limiting Reactant Cont.

39 cupcakes can be iced with the available icing, but we only have 36 cupcakes. Therefore, the

limiting reactant is the cupcakes.

Percent Yield

• Each cupcake recipe theoretically makes 48 cupcakes.

• However, when we made the cupcakes, we only got 36.

What is the Percent Yield?

Percent Yield Cont.

• Actual Yield- the amount of product actually obtained from a reaction• Theoretical Yield- the amount of product that would result if all limiting reagent reacted

Percent Yield Cont.