Limiting Factor: Chocolate chips
Today, I created a simple diagram to explain the concept of limiting factor.
In chemistry, the limiting factor is when one reactant act as a restriction to the amount of product made. In this diagram, the chocolate chips and cookie dough are the reactants and the chocolate cookies are the product.
The only requirement is that each cookie must have 6 chocolate chips.
First equation: There are 18 chocolate chips with one batch of dough. So, there will be a total of 3 cookies and all the dough will be used up.
Second equation: There is more cookie dough so that we can make more cookies. But there are only 18 chocolate chips, same as the first equation.
Conclusion:
Therefore, with the same requirement that each cookie must have 6 chocolate chips, we can only make 3 cookies even though we have more dough. The chocolate chips act as a limiting reactant to how many cookies can be made so no matter how much dough we increase, as long as the number of chocolate chips do not increase, we are limited to making 3 chocolate chip cookies.
