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Title: How can you tell if a compound is held together of a covalent or ionic bond by the chemical formula? Post by: rkkovach on Sep 19, 2012 Like when there's something like Fe(CO). Or something like that. I just made that one up.
How do you differentiate the different types of bonds just by seeing the formula? And how do you know when to name a compound with nitrite or nitrate? I know that nitrate has more oxygen atoms than nitrite, but how can I know which is the higher amount of oxygen for differents compound? Title: How can you tell if a compound is held together of a covalent or ionic bond by the chemical formula? Post by: ilikepoop on Sep 19, 2012 The formula of an ionic bond containing compound will always begin with a metal, which forms the cation. The rest of it will be a non-metal or a covalently linked compond of a metal or a non-metal with oxygen and, sometimes, hydrogen. Example: MgHPO4 is ionic: Mg(2+) HPO4(2-).
Covalent species are generally the non-metallic elementary or compound substances. Pure metals have metallic bond between atoms in solid, and, I think, also liquid, state. Nitrate and nitrite and so on: you'll have to learn it by heart, there is no strict correlation with the number of oxygens. I mean, yes, there is some: -ide has none, then hypo-...-ite, -ite, -ate, per-...-ate and hyper-...-ate increase the number of oxygen atoms by this order, but the exact numbers vary. |