A compound weighing 115 g contains 68.3 g of carbon, 13.2 g of hydrogen, 15.9 g of nitrogen, and some amount of oxygen. What is the mass percent of oxygen in the compound?
1 Answer
May 8, 2016
The balance, the mass that is not accounted for by carbon, hydrogen, and nitrogen is taken to be oxygen.
Explanation:
An analyst will typically report
Why? Because it is fairly difficult to measure oxygen (especially as the atmosphere is some 30% dioxygen).
Given this, the mass of oxygen present in your sample is:
Thus