Answer:
If the two fatty acids contain an equal number of carbon atoms, the saturated fatty acid would contain more hydrogen atoms than the unsaturated one.
Explanation:
A fatty acid molecule is made up of two parts:
The fatty acid is considered "saturated" if the hydrocarbon chain part contains only single carbon-carbon bonds. If the hydrocarbon chain of that fatty acid contains carbon-carbon double or triple bonds (such as [tex]-{\rm CH} = {\rm CH} - [/tex] and [tex]- {\rm C} \equiv {\rm C} -[/tex],) that fatty acid would be "unsaturated."
Each carbon atom typically needs four covalent bonds. For every additional carbon-carbon bond in the chain, one carbon-hydrogen bond would need to be deleted from both sides. Thus, adding one carbon-carbon bond would reduce the number of hydrogen atoms in the acid by two. For example:
Assume that the unsaturated fatty acid includes the same number of carbon atoms as the saturated fatty acid. The unsaturated fatty would include more carbon-carbon bonds, fewer carbon-hydrogen bonds, and therefore fewer hydrogen atoms overall.
