Chemistry Reference
In-Depth Information
Finally, another mistake that beginners make is to use the parentheses
for monatomic ions, as in the example Ca(Cl)
2
. Please, let me be very clear
on this: Never use parentheses around monatomic ions. Only polyatomic
ions will ever require the use of parentheses—and only if you need more
than one of them.
Lesson 5-2 Review
Write the proper chemical formula for each of the following compounds.
1. lithium hydroxide _________________________________________
2. barium sulfate ____________________________________________
3. silver nitrate _____________________________________________
4. ammonium nitrite _________________________________________
5. magnesium oxide __________________________________________
6. potassium sulfide _________________________________________
7. ammonium sulfate ________________________________________
8. barium hydroxide _________________________________________
Lesson 5-3: Naming Compounds
In many ways, the skill of naming compounds is easier than that of
writing formulas. At first, you may rely heavily upon the reference tables
that your instructor provides, but you will eventually become so familiar
with the names of the various ions that you won't need the tables all of the
time. For this lesson, we will be making use of the oxidation tables that we
used in the last lesson (Figures 5-2a and 5-2b).
First, we will go over the process for naming binary compounds. Recall
from Chapter 1 that binary compounds are compounds that contain two,
and only two, elements. This does not mean that there are necessarily only
two atoms in the compound. For example, calcium chloride (CaCl
2
) is a
binary compound, because it only contains two elements: carbon and chlo-
rine. You may have noticed that the name, calcium chloride, consists of the
names of the two elements, with the name of the second element changed
from “chlorine” to “chloride.” In fact, naming many binary compounds is
just that simple. We put the name of the less electronegative element first,
the more electronegative element second, and write the names of each
element, changing the ending of the name of the second element to “ide.”
