Emperical Formula Lab Report

Introduction The purpose of this lab is to find the emperical formula of a compound made of magnesium and oxygen. We took a strip of magnesium and combusted it to figure out how much of the strip was magnesium by weighing the remaining ashes. The weight that wasn’t transferred to ashes was burnt off in the smoke as oxygen. To find the emperical formula, you had to take the average mass of both magnesium and oxygen and divide by the average mass to get the amount of mols in the compound. After you got the mols, you divide by the smallest amount of mols and if you have a number that isn’t a positive integer, you multiply by whatever number will make it whole.

Literature Review Physical change is the process of something changing by its appearance; you can see the change happen. Chemical change is the process of bonds breaking and forming new ones. All the atoms have to stay in the compound in a chemical change, but you …show more content…
Which means whenever two chemicals react together you can’t lose any of the atoms. So lets say you have a chemical reaction of H2O + NaCl, which is water and table salt, it could go to NaH2 +ClO, but it can’t lose any of the atoms it started with or gain any new ones. The Law of Conservation of Mass governs how a chemical reaction happens because if the chemical reaction of water and table salt happened and it lost a hydrogen atom, it could make something completely different and the physical properties would also change.

Emperical and Molecular Formulas are very similar, but very different all at the same time. Emperical formulas are the simplest ratio form of a compound. Molecular Formulas are any empirical formula multiplied by any whole number integer. A molecular formula is usually to show how many atoms are in a compound, but also could be the Emperical Formula too. So like H2O is the Emperical and Molecular Formula as