In chemistry, the empirical formula of a chemical compound is the simplest positive integer ratio of atoms of each element present in a compound. An empirical formula makes no reference to isomerism, structure, or absolute number of atoms. The empirical formula is used as standard for most ionic compounds, such as CaCl2, and for macromolecules, such as SiO2. Empirical Formula gives the simplest ratio of the atoms in a molecule or a compound.
In contrast, the molecular formula identifies the number of each type of atom in a molecule, and the structural formula also shows the structure of the molecule.
For example, the chemical compound n-hexane has the structural formula CH3CH2CH2CH2CH2CH3, which shows that it has 6 carbon atoms arranged in a chain, and 14 hydrogen atoms. Hexane's molecular formula is C6H14, and its empirical formula is C3H7, showing a C:H ratio of 3:7. Different compounds can have the same empirical formula. For example, formaldehyde, acetic acid and glucose have the same empirical formula, CH2O. This is the actual molecular formula for formaldehyde, but acetic acid has double the number of atoms and glucose has six times the number of atoms.
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Famous quotes containing the words empirical and/or formula:
“To develop an empiricist account of science is to depict it as involving a search for truth only about the empirical world, about what is actual and observable.... It must involve throughout a resolute rejection of the demand for an explanation of the regularities in the observable course of nature, by means of truths concerning a reality beyond what is actual and observable, as a demand which plays no role in the scientific enterprise.”
—Bas Van Fraassen (b. 1941)
“Given for one instant an intelligence which could comprehend all the forces by which nature is animated and the respective positions of the beings which compose it, if moreover this intelligence were vast enough to submit these data to analysis, it would embrace in the same formula both the movements of the largest bodies in the universe and those of the lightest atom; to it nothing would be uncertain, and the future as the past would be present to its eyes.”
—Pierre Simon De Laplace (1749–1827)