A compound which contains carbon and hydrogen only, 0.2801 g of which gave 0.9482 g of carbon dioxide on complete combustion. Calculate the empirical formula of this compound.
A compound which contains carbon and hydrogen only, 0.2801 g of which gave 0.9482 g of carbon dioxide on complete combustion. Calculate the empirical formula of this compound.
Where did you find this question?
Whilst they should have given you the amount of water produced, it isn’t impossible to answer the question, but the method I think should work is rather ugly and I doubt it’d be expected for an exam.
It's from this worksheet I got given as homework in class. I found the moles of CO2 but don't know where to go from there without the water. This is the question: https://tinypic.host/image/0ibyh
thank you so much. I have one question. How did you know that’s the moles of Carbon dioxide and the moles of carbon were the same?
You can thank a friend of mine for this particular solution as my original method was much more complicated.
Because you are completely combusting the hydrocarbon, all of the carbon atoms in the hydrocarbon are being converted to CO2. Each CO2 molecule contains 1 carbon, so each mole of CO2 burned must contain one mole of carbon atoms that originally came from the hydrocarbon.
You can thank a friend of mine for this particular solution as my original method was much more complicated.
Because you are completely combusting the hydrocarbon, all of the carbon atoms in the hydrocarbon are being converted to CO2. Each CO2 molecule contains 1 carbon, so each mole of CO2 burned must contain one mole of carbon atoms that originally came from the hydrocarbon.