Yahoo Answers is shutting down on May 4th, 2021 (Eastern Time) and beginning April 20th, 2021 (Eastern Time) the Yahoo Answers website will be in read-only mode. There will be no changes to other Yahoo properties or services, or your Yahoo account. You can find more information about the Yahoo Answers shutdown and how to download your data on this help page.

Simple chemistry help?

I am learning to write formula but I am having trouble writing one, I am going to use ammonium sulphate as an example; my ions are NH4+ and SO4^-2 (^ with numbers after it means the number is to the top, sorry if this is confusing). I understand that my formula must be neutral so I need 2x NH4 so that will be NH2 and then I will have to put my SO4 in brackets to make it NH2(SO4), is this right if not please simply explain to me how to write chemical formulas. thankyou in advance.

2 Answers

Relevance
  • 9 years ago
    Favorite Answer

    (NH4)^2SO4

    The oxidation number of the sulfate becomes the subscript of the ammonium.

    P.S make sure to put the NH4 in parenthesis to show that the 2 goes to all parts of the ammonium.

  • 9 years ago

    sorry if this is right, i did this a while ago :)

    NH4+ has a valency of 1

    SO4 ^-2 is valency 2

    neither cancel down so becomes (NH4)2 SO4

Still have questions? Get your answers by asking now.