What type of compound uses prefixes

Greek prefixes are used for binary two element molecular compounds. Ionic compounds are named differently. Yes, the name for water using the rules for chemical nomenclature is dihydrogen monoxide. However, it is virtually never called that. When naming a binary molecular compound, the subscript for each element determines what prefix should be used. The prefixes are written at the beginning of the name of each element, with the exception of the prefix mono-, which is not used for the first element.

Other exceptions to the naming rules include water and methane. These are different from the rules to name ionic compounds. In molecular compounds we use prefixes mono-, di-, tri- etc at the beginning of each element to indicate the subscript for the element; however, we only use the prefix mono- for the second element in the compound. Mononitrogen dioxide is an incorrect answer choice because the compound name will never begin with mono-.

We also need to change the ending of the last element in molecular compounds to -ide. Together, the name becomes "nitrogen dioxide. Nitrate refers to the complex ion.

Nitrogen oxide is simply. Nitrous acid is also known as hydrogen nitrite, and is formed from a hydrogen ion and a nitrite ion with an ionic bond:. What is the chemical name for?

In naming a compound you must look at what is being paired together. In this case a metal is bonding with a non-metal, thus the rules for naming metal compounds must be used.

When naming a compound with a metal, the name of the metal goes first followed by the name of the anion. The name of the metal is cobalt and the anion is nitrogen. To name the anion of an atom drop the ending and add -ide, so the anion is named nitride. So far the name of this compound is cobalt nitride. However, cobalt is a metal that can have multiple charges so a Roman numeral is needed in the name. To figure out what Roman numeral is necessary you have to know the charge of the anion.

To find the charge of the anion take the group number and subtract 8. Nitrogen is in group 5A so each nitride anion must be.

All compounds are neutral unless otherwise indicated so the charge of all ions must total 0. Each cobalt must have a positive 2 charge so that becomes the Roman numeral necessary to name this compound. The compound pairs a non-metal element with a non-metal element thus to name this compound prefixes must be used. In naming a binary non-metal to non-metal compound the proper prefix goes in front of each name.

The second element drops the ending and gets an -ide ending. If the second element starts with an o the a on the prefix can be dropped.

There are 3 bromines and 8 oxygens, so the name becomes:. You may recognize that this molecule is very similar to the acetate ion, , which results upon deprotonation of acetic acid. Acetic acid is a commonly used weak acid in chemistry. What is the correct name for?

The compound name is strontium chloride because this is an ionic compound with no transition metal. Remember: ionic compounds do not have prefixes "di," "tri," or "penta". When assigning oxidation numbers for the atoms of this molecule, we find that strontium has a charge of and chlorine has a charge of. Since this is a neutral molecule, two atoms of chlorine are needed to balance one atom of strontium.

Since strontium is not a transition metal, it can only have a charge of , so there is no need to specify a charge in Roman numerals, which is the case for transition metal-containing compounds.

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Search for:. Naming Molecular Compounds. Learning Objective Apply the rules for naming molecular compounds. The number in parentheses is the charge of the cation. These compounds are always neutral not ions which have charges , and consist of only two elements see acid naming below for compounds containing only non-metal elements, but with more than two elements.

The prototypical compound is CO 2 , which is called carbon dioxide. The first element shown in the compound is named as the element e. It is assumed to be present only once, hence just the name of the element.