Limiting Reactant vs Theoretical Yield

[Kassandra Molina 2B]

What is the difference between a limiting reactant and a theoretical yield? Or are they the same?

[Kaylin Krahn 1I]

A limiting reactant is the reactant in an equation that determines how much product will be produced. This is found by determining how many moles of each reactant you have and comparing it to the ratio of reactants found when balancing the chemical equation.

Theoretical yield is the maximum potential amount of product that could be produced from a certain amount of reactant. This is usually compared to actual yield, which is always less than theoretical yield due to other small reactions or imperfections in experiments. Actual yield divided by theoretical yield equals percent yield.

[Mikaila 3E]

You would have to find the limiting reactant in order to determine the theoretical yield. In other words, to find the theoretical yield, you would still go through the same steps as the finding the limiting reactant.

[Gwen Peng 1L]

A limiting reactant determines the amount of product created from a reactant. This means that a reaction will stop once the limiting reactant in the reaction is completely used up. Whereas, the theoretical yield is an estimation of the amount of product which is predicted using a stoichiometric calculation based on the number of moles.