Sodium Chloride: Binary Ionic Compounds

There are thousands of compounds which have been discovered, and are yet to be discovered, with all these possible combinations it is necessary to provide order through a systematic naming system. This naming system, aside from organization also provides the reader with information about the given element. There are different kinds of compounds, ionic, covalent, and acidic and over all of this the atoms making up the compounds are either binary or polyatomic. The simplest compounds to name are binary ionic compounds, for example NaCl, which is named Sodium Chloride. Na having a positive oxidation number goes first followed by Cl which having a negative oxidation number goes last and is changed from Chlorine to chloride the -ide indicating its negative charge. Of course, the
And for high oxidation rates such as in ClO_3 the suffix -ate is used, so that this compound would be named chlorate.When dealing with polyatomic ions it is important to add parenthesis, within the chemical formula because when calling for more than one atom, you must increase the ion as a whole not just one of the elements. With covalent bonds, that is, bonds in which electrons are shared between atoms often require more than one atom to balance oxidation numbers, for example, NO_2 we use greek suffixes to indicate that there is more than one oxygen atom in this compound. The Greek suffix for two is di- so, the name would be nitrogen dioxide. There also are acidic compounds such as HCl which is named hydrochloric acid. All acids contain H+ cation so when naming acids it not necessary to include this, instead only the anion is named or in other words, the ion with a negative charge, and the prefix hypo along with the suffix -ic or -ous (dependent on whether or not the acid contain an oxygen anion) This is also helpful in identifying which part of the acid is not hydrogen. This best seen in the compound HNO_3 which is called nitric