Answer:
There is 1 carbon atom in the empirical formula.
Explanation:
First, let's use the given mass of CO₂ to calculate the moles of C, which will be the same amount of C moles present in the sample:
Then with the mass of H₂O we calculate the moles of H:
Now we calculate the mass of C, H in the sample, in order to calculate the mass of O, which is calculated by substracting the mass of C and H from the total mass:
Then we convert g O to mol O
C ⇒ 0.0841 mol C
H ⇒ 0.1682 mol H
O ⇒ 0.0983 mol O
Now we divide those values by the lowest among them:
So the empirical formula is CH₂O
There is 1 carbon atom in the empirical formula.