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### Whole Number Coefficients

Posted: Fri Jun 30, 2017 9:30 pm
When writing empirical formulas, is there a trick to knowing what to multiply your decimals by in order to get whole numbers, or do I have to guess and check?

For example, I got coefficients of 1, 1, and 2.381 in a problem I was working through. What should I multiply 2.381 by in order to get a whole number?

### Re: Whole Number Coefficients

Posted: Fri Jun 30, 2017 10:13 pm
Ya it is pretty much guess and check but my TA said you shouldn't be multiplying by anything bigger than 4 or 5

### Re: Whole Number Coefficients

Posted: Sat Jul 01, 2017 1:37 pm
You can also convert them to fractions and multiply by the denominator.

For example, you can convert 1.666 to $\frac{5}{3}$ and multiply by 3 to get 5.

### Re: Whole Number Coefficients

Posted: Sat Jul 01, 2017 2:13 pm
Try to multiply it by a number that will give you the decimal closest to a whole number (if yet not given a whole number).
For example, let's say your number is 1.33, one would multiply it by a 3 in order to obtain 3.9970..., which would give you the closest to a whole number, 4.

### Re: Whole Number Coefficients

Posted: Sun Jul 02, 2017 7:38 am
From my experience, when you're first starting to do these types of problems, it's a lot of guessing and checking, but after you've done enough practice problems, you get to the point where when you see the decimals you'll intuitively know what you should multiply by.

### Re: Whole Number Coefficients

Posted: Sun Jul 02, 2017 11:03 pm
I definitely agree with Dabin Kang. It becomes much easier when you convert to fractions rather than multiplying by big numbers from the beginning. It lessens the time to determine your final formulas and is a lot simpler.