Question

This is the chemical formula for nickel tetracarbonyl (a powerfully poisonous liquid used in nickel refining):nico4a chemical engineer has determined by measurements that there are 7.0 moles of carbon in a sample of nickel tetracarbonyl. how many moles of oxygen are in the sample?round your answer to 2 significant digits.

Answer 1

Answer : There are 7.0 moles of oxygen in the formula.

Explanation :

The chemical formula of nickel tetracarbonyl is Ni(CO)₄.

We can see that there are 4 carbon atoms and 4 oxygen atoms which together form 4 carbonyl (CO) groups.

Therefore the mole ratio of C to O is 1 : 1.

Let us use this as a conversion factor to find moles of oxygen.

We have 7.0 moles of carbon in the formula.

The moles of O can be calculated as,

$7 mol C \times \frac{1 mol O}{1 mol C} = 7.0 mol O$

There are 7.0 moles of oxygen in the formula.