Question # 20
Question: " Can you please do a question where when getting the empirical formulas from percent and the subscripts are decimals like C1.75 H3.25 01.5 "
For empirical formulas you will never be able to create a compound that has decimal points as subscripts. This is because chemical compounds follow the rules of definite proportions which states that a given chemical compound always contains its component elements in a fixed ratio. This ratio must always be whole numbers. The steps you calculated to get your answer I am assuming are right, but you just missed the last step. If you end with decimals such as these multiply all the subscripts by the same number in order to convert the subscripts into whole numbers. In this case, the number you multiply by is four, since the smallest number that can multiply into each number to get a whole number is four. Therefore, the correct answer is C7H13O6
To Sum-up: If the number is too far to round (x.1 ~ x.9), then multiply each solution by the same factor to get the lowest whole number multiple
For empirical formulas you will never be able to create a compound that has decimal points as subscripts. This is because chemical compounds follow the rules of definite proportions which states that a given chemical compound always contains its component elements in a fixed ratio. This ratio must always be whole numbers. The steps you calculated to get your answer I am assuming are right, but you just missed the last step. If you end with decimals such as these multiply all the subscripts by the same number in order to convert the subscripts into whole numbers. In this case, the number you multiply by is four, since the smallest number that can multiply into each number to get a whole number is four. Therefore, the correct answer is C7H13O6
To Sum-up: If the number is too far to round (x.1 ~ x.9), then multiply each solution by the same factor to get the lowest whole number multiple
