welcome to nadashi science where our goal is to make science simple please like this video And subscribe to our channel so we can produce more helpful science content empirical and molecular formulas are very similar but there is one key difference between them in this video we will cover that key difference along with the specific information each type of formula tells us [Music] [Applause] thank you in order to understand empirical molecular formulas it is important that you remember the information we covered in our molar mass video in our mole video if you do not remember this information or need a refresher please check out our video on these topics the molecular form of a compound is the actual formula for the compound and it shows the actual ratio of elements in the compound some examples are shown here here we see the formula c6h1206 which is glucose CH4 which is methane and H2O2 which is hydrogen peroxide these are the actual real formulas for these compounds and they show the actual ratio of elements in these compounds so for sugar we see that for every six carbon atoms we have 12 hydrogen atoms and six oxygen atoms for methane we have one carbon atom for every four hydrogen atoms and for hydrogen peroxide there are two hydrogen atoms for every two oxygen atoms the empirical formula can be thought of as the simplified version of the molecular formula and it's going to show us the lowest ratio of elements in a compound for example the formula C6H12O6 for glucose can be simplified by dividing all the subscripts by six when I do this I get the formula ch2o by simplifying this formula I am showing the lowest ratio for the elements in glucose for every one carbon there are two hydrogens and one oxygen I can simplify the other two formulas for methane and hydrogen peroxide to get CH4 and h0 you can see here that methane is already simplified so the empirical and molecular formulas are the same while hydrogen peroxide we simplify to h0 now you know the difference between empirical and molecular formulas if you found this video helpful please like the video and subscribe to the channel to help us be able to produce more helpful science content if there's a specific topic you need help with please let us know in the comments foreign [Music] [Applause]