EmpiricalFormulaepptempiricalformulaeppt.pptVIP

* Empirical and Molecular Formulas How to find out what an unknown compound is A chemist obtains a new product What is the formula for the compound? First step – determine constituent elements and their amounts This info can be used to determine chemical formula Formula of a compound represents relative numbers of atoms present E.g. “CO2” tells us that in a molecule of this compound there is 1 carbon atom to every 2 oxygen atoms To determine the formula of a substance we need to count the atoms – we can do this by weighing An example You have a compound that you know contains only Carbon, Hydrogen and Oxygen. You have a 0.2015 g sample Analysis shows you have 0.0806 g C, 0.01353 g H, and 0.1074 g O We can convert these masses to moles, and then moles to atoms using dimensional analysis….. Determining # of moles of elements in unknown compound Determining number of atoms of unknown compound To summarize up to this point We have .00671 moles of Carbon We have .01342 moles of Hydrogen We have .006713 moles of Oxygen Amount of Carbon = Amount of Oxygen .01342/.006713 = 2, so we have twice as much Hydrogen as we have of Oxygen and as we have of Carbon We have a ratio of 1:2:1 We know the ratio of elements 1 Carbon : 2 Hydrogens : 1 Oxygen We can write this as CH2O Is this the molecular formula? Maybe…but the molecule might also have 2 Carbons, 4 Hydrogens and 2 Oxygens, or it might have 16 Carbons, 32 Hydrogens and 16 Oxygens We have found the EMPIRICAL FORMULA – a formula that represents the ratio of elements in a compound. This is also called “simplest formula” since it is smallest whole-number ratio of elements in the compound Empirical Formula Vs Molecular Formula Empirical formula gives relative numbers of atoms e.g. CH2O Molecular formula gives the actual numbers of atoms e.g. C6H12O6 C6H12O6 = (CH2O)6 Find the Empirical Formula Empirical Formula of Benzene = CH Empirical Formula of Dioxin = C6H2Cl2O How to calculate empirical formula We have 0.2636 g