chemistry question #815

Andrea, a 16 year old female from London asks on June 8, 2002,

Q:

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, A:

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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