I need help with this Chemistry problem...please help me.?

Question

the charistic odor of pineapple is due to ethyl butyrate, a compound containing carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen. Combustion of 2.58mg of ethyl butyrate produces 6.32mg of CO2 and 2.58mg of H2O. What is the emperical formula of the compound?

I need the answer so i can study..plzplzplz

Answer 1

You'll need your periodic table for this one. Looks hard, but break it down and it's simple:
1) find the atomic mass for C, O, and H. (that's listed on the periodic table, that's the number with all the decimals, like the one for H is 1.002 or something)
2) you'll want to find the number of moles that you have of each element. to do that, convert the mg to g.
3) the atomic mass units are g/mol, so divide the atomic mass of the CO2 and the H20 by the total of the atomic masses of the elements (for example, add the a.m. for C + 2X the atomic mass for O to get the total for CO2, then multiply that result by the g).
4) The number you get is the # of moles of each compound. (Remember to multiply that by 2 for O and H, since there are two moles of each of those per 1 mole of their compound).
5) The empirical formula is going to be the most basic formula you can get. For instance, if you got C4H8O2, then the empirical formula would be C2H4O (get it? divide everything by a common denominator, in this case 2).
6) As a hint, ethyl butyrate has 4 C's. That's because of the "butyrate"--that means 4 C's.
7) So start by lining up all your elements, like CHO.
8) Put the total number of moles of each element that you got a few steps ago underneath each one, like a subscript (C4, etc.)
9) Divide them by a common denominator, until you can't divide down anymore.
10) Done! That's your formula. Good luck!

Answer 2

The empirical formula is the simplest formula for the compound. The ratio of the number of atoms of each element in the compound.