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Ch.3 - Molecules and Compounds

Chapter 3, Problem 28a

Write a chemical formula for each molecular model. (See Appendix IIA for color codes.) (a)

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welcome back everyone in this example, we need to provide the chemical formula of the given molecular representation and refer to the legend below. So according to our legend we have for the color gray, that corresponds to the atom carbon for the color black. This corresponds to the atom hydrogen and the color red being used in our molecule is the atom oxygen. And so we want to recall that for our number of atoms counted. This will correspond to our subscript in the chemical formula. We should recall that our chemical formula is the same us saying giving our molecular formula. So these two terms are interchangeable. So going to our diagram counting our total number of gray colored atoms, we see we have just one gray colored atom in the center of our molecule and this means that we just have one carbon atom. And so we would therefore say that our subscript is C1. However, when we have sub scripts of one, we don't really need to write them so we can just write this out as just see moving on to our black atoms Here we see that we have a total number of 1234 black hydrogen atoms in our molecule. And so we can say we have four hydrogen atoms. And so therefore we would say our subscript is going to be a church four. Moving on counting our red atoms in the molecule for oxygen, we see we have just one red oxygen atom in our molecule. So we say we have one oxygen. And so therefore our subscript would be 01 which we can simplify to just Oh and so overall, we would say that our chemical formula is going to be c h four and then oh, which we should recognize corresponds to the name of our molecule being methanol. So for our final answer, this is what's highlighted in yellow here, which is our chemical formula. So I hope that everything that I explained was clear. If you have any questions, please leave them down below and I will see everyone in the next practice video.