Empirical formula
In
chemistry, the empirical formula of a
chemical compound is a simple expression of the relative number of each type of
atom in it. An empirical formula makes no reference to
isomerism, structure, or absolute number of atoms. Empirical formulae are the standard for most ionic compounds, such as CaCl2, and for macromolecules, such as SiO2. The term empirical refers to the process of
elemental analysis, a technique of
analytical chemistry used to determine the relative percent composition of a pure chemical substance by element.
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empirical formula
Noun
1. a chemical formula showing the ratio of elements in a compound rather than the total number of atoms
(hypernym) formula, chemical formula
Empirical Formula
Definition
The empirical formula is derived from the mineral's structural (molecular) formula by using the published analysis of the mineral or deriving the analysis using basic rules.
1.Atomic substitutions were analyzed by the following procedure if published analyses were not available. Adjustments were made to match the measured density with the calculated density if needed:
(K,Na) = K0.75 Na0.25
(K,Na,Cs)= K0.6 Na0.3 Cs0.1
2.Rare Earth Elements (REE in formulae) were calculated based on the chondrite normalized abundances. This database used 144 for the REE atomic weight and 61 as the atomic number.
3.Solid solution series minerals were calculated based on the mid-points of the accepted compositional range of the mineral.
The empirical formula was used to calculate the chemical composition in this database.
empirical formula (simplest formula)
Compare with
molecular formula .Empirical formulas show which elements are present in a compound, with their mole ratios indicated as subscripts. For example, the empirical formula of glucose is CH2O, which means that for every mole of carbon in the compound, there are 2 moles of hydrogen and one mole of oxygen.
empirical formula