Final answer:
To determine the empirical formula of a compound containing 83% potassium and 17.0% oxygen, convert the percentages to moles and find the simplest ratio. In this case, the empirical formula is K2O.
Step-by-step explanation:
To determine the empirical formula of a compound, we need to convert the percentages of each element to moles and find the simplest ratio of the elements. In this case, we have 83% potassium (K) and 17.0% oxygen (O).
Assuming we have 100g of the compound, we have 83g of K and 17.0g of O.
Now, we need to convert the masses to moles using the elements' atomic masses. We have 83g K / 39.10 g/mol = 2.121 moles K, and 17.0g O / 16.00 g/mol = 1.063 moles O.
Finally, we divide the moles by the smallest moles to get the ratio of the elements. In this case, it is approximately 2:1. Therefore, the empirical formula of the compound is K2O.