nomenclature and writing formulas

Some textbook authors describe chemistry as the science of matter and change. Many students find the changes more interesting than the matter but in order to understand the changes we need to know something about the substances as they are at the "beginning" and as they are at the "end". Matter is something that occupies space and has mass. That's a basic definition from some elementary science course in your past. Chemists go a little further and subdivide matter into two categories: pure substances and mixtures. Pure substances may be either elements (all atoms alike) or compounds(different atoms combined in molecules of definite proportions and inseparable by physical means). Mixtures contain at least two pure substances and can--at least in theory--be separated by physical means. Mixtures of the same substances will not necessarily contain the same proportions of those substances. Elements and compounds have constant properties which can be described as both physical and chemical. Most of the substances we will work with and study during the course are compounds. Compounds vary a lot. Even compounds containing the same elements like water (H2O) and hydrogen peroxide (H2O2) have very different chemical and physical properties. So it can't be just the kinds of elements present in compounds that determines their properties. Compounds can be roughly divided into two very large categories based on the way the elements are put together in them. Ionic compounds are composed of positive and negative ions (atoms with extra or fewer electrons than their neutral counterparts). In such compounds the total charge of the positive and negative ions always adds up to zero. The attractions of the opposite charges holds the compounds together. Molecular compounds are composed of neutral atoms which are held together by sharing some of their electrons in common. No separate charges are involved. How can you distinguish one kind of compound from the other?

In general ionic compounds are composed of metals and non-metals. Molecular compounds typically consist of only non-metals. In water solutions ionic compounds are electrolytes. Molecular compounds generally are not. For example, magnesium chloride, MgCl2, contains one metal (magnesium) and one non-metal (chlorine). It is ionic. Nitrogen dioxide, NO2, contains only non-metals so it is molecular. You will notice these compounds are named a little differently. The rules of chemical nomenclature begin simply enough but eventually become pretty messy. Our goal here is to keep things simple. The basic "bottom line" rules are:

in ionic compounds metals always come first and numerical prefixes arenever used to indicate the number of a type of atom in the formula in molecular compounds numerical prefixes must be used to indicate the number of a type of atom in the formula

Examples

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Writing chemical formulas from names turns the process around. Molecular formulas stand out because they will contain no metals and probably have at least one numerical prefix. The words are simply translated into symbols in the same order in which they appear in the name. Ionic formulas have to be constructed more carefully since the total charge of the ions must add up to zero. So subscripts must often be inserted into the formula to make the math come out right. Examples

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Just to be sure the picture is not too simplistic, we should realize that many compounds do not follow these simple rules. The compounds we have looked at are mainly inorganic. That means they do not contain carbon and hydrogen. Organic compounds have an entirely different system of nomenclature--much more complicated--which we will not attempt to learn this year. Organic compounds are typically molecular. These include compounds like ethanol (C2H6O) and sucrose (C12H22O11). There are also some compounds--like water--which have developed trivial names over the years that are not systematic. No one calls water "dihydrogen monoxide". A small list of these is included in your study guide. Learn them. carbon monoxide ammonia methane CO NH3 CH4

hydrogen sulfide

H2S

Finally, the nomenclature of acids is more complicated than is worth learning in an introductory course. So rather than struggle with a lot of rules you will never use, learn these five common acids (also listed in your study guide): hydrochloric acid HCl

nitric acid

HNO3

sulfuric acid

H2SO4

phosphoric acid

H3PO4

acetic acid

CH3COOH

MOLE CONCEPT
One of the fundamental ideas of modern chemistry is that all matter is made up of atoms. The atoms themselves are composed of smaller particles. For our purposes these particles include the following three: protons neutrons electrons Most of the mass of an atom comes from the first two which together coexist in the center of the atom called the nucleus. It is the number of protons which is called the atomic number (Z, from the German Zahl or "number") and differentiates one element from another. The atomic numbers are the sequential integers on the periodic table which currently number the elements from 1 to 116. Neutral atoms (as opposed to ions) have a number of electrons equal to the number of protons in the nucleus. Electrons are found in the space surrounding the nucleus rather than inside it. And while all neutral atoms of say, oxygen, always contain 8 protons and 8 electrons they do not all necessarily have the same number of neutrons. Atoms of the same element with different numbers of neutrons are known as isotopes. Some oxygen atoms may have 8 neutrons while others may have 7 or 9. Chemically these atoms are essentially the same and often come mixed in nature. Thus the average atomic masses (which are the other numbers on the periodic table) are weighted averages of the mass numbers (A, from the GermanAtomgewichte or "atomic weight") of the different isotopes that

occur naturally. The mass numbers themselves are simply the sum of the masses of the protons and neutrons on the atomic mass scale---a scale on which each particle is counted as 1. For example, the oxygen isotope with a mass number of 16 contains eight protons and eight neutrons (as well as eight electrons). Another oxygen isotope with a mass number of 18 contains.....how many neutrons??? Since all oxygen atoms have 8 protons (the atomic number or Z), 18 - 8 = 10 neutrons. The general relationship would be: A = Z + #n Complete isotopic symbols contain this information. The simple atomic mass scale (amu) gives only relative masses. Individual atoms are far too small to be massed with instruments we typically use in the lab. Historically this was quite a problem. How to mass something you can't see? If you can't measure mass reliably then the roots of modern chemistry wither away because the most fundamental laws of chemical combination are based on combining masses of substances and mass conservation overall during chemical changes. A number of approaches have been used:

using the lightest element (H) as the mass standard set at 1 using oxygen (with which most elements combine) set at 16 using the isotope carbon-12

The third method is the current mass standard. All atomic masses are relative to the mass of an atom of carbon-12. For example, the average atomic mass of hydrogen is very close to 1. That means an atom of hydrogen is 1/12 the mass of an atom of carbon-12. Similarly, the average atomic mass of magnesium is about 24. So a magnesium atom is about twice as heavy as an atom of carbon-12. Because the atomic mass scale is relative, the actual units (amu, g, tonnes, etc.) don't really matter. Two atoms of magnesium will still be about twice as heavy as two atoms of carbon-12. In that simple idea lies the modern solution to the dilemma of massing what you can't see. Consider the following comparisons: 1 atom H : 1 atom C-12

10 atoms H : 10 atoms C-12 100 atoms H : 100 atoms C-12 (you get the idea...) What is the mass ratio in each case? One to twelve Tell us something we don't know! Well, the problem with 100 or even 1000 atoms is that you still can't mass them. They are just too small. So chemists have approached this problem from the opposite end: pick reasonable and convenient masses in the ratio of 1:12--how about grams? 1 gram H : 12 grams C-12 What do these masses have in common???? They each contain the same number of atoms. How many atoms? A lot. Modern determinations of the number of atoms in 12 g of carbon-12 put it somewhere around 6.02 x 1023 atoms. This is a BIG number. This number is known as Avogadro's number (NA). The quantity is called themole (L. "heap or pile"). The relative atomic mass of an element in grams is commonly called the molar mass of the element. For carbon that would be about 12.0 g/mol. Moral #1: the average atomic mass of an element, when expressed in grams, is one mole of that kind of atom. This concept enables chemists to essentially "count" atoms by massing them. For example, if 12.0 g of carbon contains 6.02 x 1023 atoms then 6.00 g of carbon must contain half that amount or 3.01 x 1023 atoms. Even simpler, we could say that if 12.0 g of carbon is 1 mole of atoms, then 6.00 g of carbon must be 0.500 mole of atoms. Moral #2: the ability to change back and forth between grams and moles is survival skill No. 1 in chemistry Converting between grams and moles can be thought of in terms of simple proportions or set up using unit analysis as the following examples will show.

It is also possible to determine the number of atoms (or molecules) in a sample in a similar fashion, although this is very seldom done.

Finally, the molar masses of compounds can be determined by adding the individual atomic masses of the constituent elements.

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% composition and empirical formulas

With what we know today about ion charges, nomenclature rules and so on, writing chemical formulas is fairly routine. But where did formulas come frombefore all of that was figured out? Early chemists spent a lot of time developing techniques to analyze substances, eventually arriving at data such as the number of grams of hydrogen and oxygen in a given mass of water. In percent form this information is called "percent composition by mass" or simply percent composition. The calculation of % composition can be based on what we know today is the correct formula for water, H2O. The molar mass of water is 18.0 g/mol. Of that 18.0 g, 2.0 g are hydrogen and 16.0 g are oxygen. So the mass percents of each element could be expressed as:

EXAMPLE

In some respects this method puts the cart before the horse. But the examples shown can be used in some situations to help answer parts of more complicated questions. Generally experimental mass data is used to determine a chemical formula in a laboratory. There are also more advanced instrumental methods available today but they won't help you understand how grams, moles and chemical formulas work together! Consider the data obtained by analyzing a compound. A chemist determines that the substance contains potassium, chlorine and oxygen. Here is some sample data: element mass, g

potassi 0.479 um chlorine 0.434 oxygen 0.588

What is the chemical formula of this compound? It might be tempting to say K0.479Cl0.434O0.588 but of course that is not correct. The numbers in chemical formulas are always integers since they represent actual whole atoms which combine. The fact that they represent the numbers of atoms and not their masses should suggest a direction to follow. n a formula like H2O, two atoms of hydrogen are combined with one atom of oxygen. We could also say that two moles of hydrogen atoms are combined with one mole of oxygen atoms. So if we knew the moles of K, Cl and O we would be that much closer to knowing the formula.

element

mole s

potassi 0.01 um 23 chlorine oxygen 0.01 22 0.03 68

This is a little disappointing as we are no closer to integers than we were before. A closer look at those decimals will show that there is a nearly integer ratio hidden in the data. One way to get it out is to divide all of the values by the smallest value. That makes the smallest number 1 and hopefully all the other values larger integers (or also 1).

So the formula for this compound is KClO3. Such a formula is often called theempirical formula. It gives the smallest integer ratio which represents

the proportions in which the atoms combine in the compound. It may also represent the actual or molecular formula. To illustrate the difference, consider the empirical formula for hydrogen peroxide: HO. The known molar mass of hydrogen peroxide is 34.0 g/mol. But the empirical formula mass is only 17.0 g/mol. That means the actual molecular formula for the compound must be H2O2 or twice the empirical formula. Molecular formulas are either the same as the empirical formula or some integer multiple. To know whether an empirical formula is also the molecular formula you need to know the molar mass of the compound.