A 12.04 g liquid sample contains 7.34 g of carbon. What is the mass percentage of carbon?

1. Mass percentage is the element mass divided by the compound mass, converted to a percentage. 2. Substituting gives 7.34 g / 12.04 g x 100 percent. 3. The result is 61.0 percent carbon. 4. The value 16.4 percent inverts the fraction and reports the compound mass over the element mass. 5. The value 73.4 percent simply reuses the digits of the carbon mass without dividing at all. _Source: OpenStax Chemistry (CC BY 4.0), Ch 3 "Composition of Substances and Solutions", section 3.2 Determining Empirical and Molecular Formulas_