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How to bond polyatomic ions?
I was sick for a few important days in chemistry class, and I need a little help.
I'm a little confused when trying to bond polyatomic ions.
Here's one in specific I'm having a little trouble figuring out:
What is the formula of ammonium nitrate?
If you can explain this to me and explain what you did to figure this out, please let me know. Thanks!
1 Answer
- 1 decade agoFavorite Answer
Well I'm sorry to hear that you where sick for such a great class such as chemistry! Lol
NH4= ammonium NO3=nitrate
soo...
The formula would be NH4NO3, to do this you must know that NH4 has +1 charge (you first need to memorize all the required polyatomic ions and there charges in order to do this or use the sheet the teacher gave you with the names of the ions and charges) and that NO3 has a -1 charge, therefore the "cation" (ion that is positive because it loses an electron) goes in front of the "anion" (ion that's negative because it gains an electron) and there's no need for any subscripts other than the one's in the polyatomic ion because the charges equal zero.
Here's an example of one that needs additional subscripts:
ammonium phosphate, NH4 has +1 charge and phosphate is PO4 and it has a -3 charge
so you would do (NH4)3PO4 because 3 NH4 ions= +3 charge and since PO4 has a -3 charge they will be balanced!
Hope that helped!
Source(s): I took AP Chem!
