Video Transcript
What would the name of a compound
containing one atom of chlorine and two atoms of oxygen be?
In this question, we need to name a
compound that contains chlorine and oxygen. Chlorine and oxygen are both
nonmetals found on the right-hand side of the periodic table, which means that the
compound that they form will be a molecular compound. When we name molecular compounds,
we name the less electronegative element first. Then, we’ll name the more
electronegative element with the suffix -ide. Finally, we’ll use these Greek
numerical prefixes to indicate the number of atoms that we have in a compound.
Chlorine is less electronegative
than oxygen, so we’ll name it first, followed by oxygen. But we’ll have to replace the end
of its name with the suffix -ide. Finally, we’ll use Greek prefixes
to indicate the number of atoms. We have one atom of chlorine, which
corresponds to mono-, and two atoms of oxygen. But by convention, we drop the
prefix if there’s only one of the first element. So, we would drop the mono-,
leaving us with chlorine dioxide.
