Question

(See photo)What are the Molecular at empirical chemical formulas of a compound made of these molecules?(The line stand for chemical bonds between atoms. You can ignore the dots they represent lone pairs any word about them later.)Molecular formula?Empirical formula?

Answer 1

What is the molecular formula of a compound?

Molecular formula tells us how many atoms of each element are in that compound.

So if we want to find the molecular formula of the compound that we are given we have count the amount of atoms of each element that are there in the image. So:

C: 4

H: 8

O: 2

Then the molecular formula of our compound is: C₄H₈O₂

What is the empirical formula of a compound?

The empirical formula tells us the simplest or most reduced ratio of elements in a compound.

In order to find it we have to reduce the number of atoms to find the simplest ratio between them. If we take a look at our compound we see that we can divide all them by two.

C: 4/2 = 2

H: 8/2 = 4

O: 2/2 = 1

Then the empirical formula is C₂H₄O