Chemistry Question #815
Andrea, a 16 year old female from London asks on June 8, 2002,
In chemistry, how do you know what the formula of a compound is? For example, how do you know if it is AlO, or Al2O2??
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The answer
Barry Shell
answered on June 10, 2002
It's kind of complicated, but you can find out at places like http://www.acdlabs.com/iupac/nomenclature/ or
http://www.visionlearning.com/library/science/chemistry-2/CHE2.4-organic_chem.htm
In general the idea is to capture a bit of the structure of the compound in the formula.
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