A hydrocarbon has $80 %$ $80%$ carbon content. What is its empirical formula?

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A hydrocarbon has $80 %$ $80%$ carbon content. What is its empirical formula?

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Answer 1 · 2017-08-14T18:02:53

If the hydrocarbon has 80% carbon content, then the empirical formula is $C H_{3}$ $CH_3$ .

Explanation:

We assume a mass of $100 \cdot g$ $100*g$ of stuff...

$Moles of carbon = \frac{80.0 \cdot g}{12.011 \cdot g \cdot m o l^{- 1}} = 6.67 \cdot m o l .$ $"Moles of carbon"=(80.0*g)/(12.011*g*mol^-1)=6.67*mol.$

$Moles of hydrogen = \frac{20.0 \cdot g}{1.00794 \cdot g \cdot m o l^{- 1}} = 19.84 \cdot m o l .$ $"Moles of hydrogen"=(20.0*g)/(1.00794*g*mol^-1)=19.84*mol.$

We divide thru by the smallest quantity, i.e.

$C : \frac{6.67 \cdot m o l}{6.67 \cdot m o l} = 1$ $C:(6.67*mol)/(6.67*mol)=1$

$H : \frac{19.84 \cdot m o l}{6.67 \cdot m o l} = 3$ $H:(19.84*mol)/(6.67*mol)=3$

So our empirical formula is $C H_{3}$ $CH_3$ . In fact, this is consistent with a molecular formula of $C_{2} H_{6}$ $C_2H_6$ , i.e. $ethane$ $"ethane"$ . The question might have asked this, had they quoted a proper value for molecular weight.

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A hydrocarbon has $80 %$ $80%$ carbon content. What is its empirical formula?

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Explanation:

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A hydrocarbon has 80%80% carbon content. What is its empirical formula?

1 Answer

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A hydrocarbon has $80 %$ $80%$ carbon content. What is its empirical formula?