Chapter 5: Ionic and Covalent Compounds: Writing formulas and naming binary ionic compounds

While we will learn how to names these compounds as we progress through the semester we will begin now with the simplest types of compounds, the binary compounds. These are compounds which contain only two elements. There are two types of binary compounds that I want you to be familiar with at this point in the course.

I. Binary compounds containing metals and nonmetal elements.

The correct chemical name is composed of the name of the metallic element followed by the name of the nonmetal which has been modified to the identifying stem plus an -ide ending.

 

Symbol

Element

Stem

ending

B

boron

bor

boride

Br

bromine

brom

bromide

Cl

chlorine

chlor

chloride

F

fluorine

fluor

fluoride

H

hydrogen

hydr

hydride

I

iodine

iod

iodide

N

nitrogen

nitr

nitride

O

oxygen

ox

oxide

P

phosphorus

phosph

phosphide

S

sulfur

sulf

sulfide

For example,

NaCl

sodium chloride

PbI2

lead iodide

Al2O3

aluminum oxide

BaS

barium sulfide

 

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