A compound containing xenon and fluorine was prepared by shining sunlight on a mixture of Xe (0.526 g) and excess F2 gas. If you isolate 0.678 g of the new compound, what is its empirical formula

Explanation:

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In this case, according the law of conservation of mass, we can see that, since the total mass of the Xe-F compound is 0.678 g and that of xenon is 0.526 g, we have 0.152 g as the mass of reactants equal the mass of the products. It means that we can compute the moles of each atom in the compound as shown below:

Now we divide the moles of both reactants by the moles of xenon as those are the fewest ones in order to find their subscripts in the empirical formula:

Thus, the empirical formula is:

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