3.

3 chemical formula
• Chemical formula is a representation of a chemical
substance using alphabets to represent the atoms
and subscript numbers to show the number of each
type of atoms found in the elementary entities of
the substance
 Empirical Formula and Molecular Formula

• The empirical formula is the chemical formula that

shows the simplest ratio of the number of atoms of
each element in a compound.

• The molecular formula is the chemical formula that

shows the actual number of atoms of each element
found in a molecule of a compound.
 Determination of an Empirical Formula

Element
Mass (g)
Number of moles
of atoms

Mole ratio

Simplest mole ratio

of atom

The empirical formula is __________

Crucible + lid 24.0 g

Crucible + lid + magnesium ribbon 26.4 g

Crucible + lid + magnesium oxide 28.0 g

Determination of a Molecular Formula

We can find the molecular formula if we know:

(i) Its empirical formula
(ii)Its molar mass
 Chemical Formulae of Ionic Compounds

• Ionic compounds are made up of cations (positively-

charged ions) and anions (negatively-charged ions).
 Naming of Chemical Compounds

• For ionic compounds, the name of the cation is

written first followed by the name of the anion
• Some metals form more than one type of ions.
• When naming simple molecular compounds, the more
electropositive element is named first
followed by the name of the more electronegative
element. The name of the first element remains
the same while the second element ends with ‘ide’.
Greek prefixes are used to represent the number of
atoms of each element in simple molecular
compounds.
• For metal less reactive toward oxygen (exm : lead,
copper..)