www.mindbites.com Naming chemical compounds can be tricky, and requires a little bit of knowledge about the trends and naming conventions. First, Professor Harman explains that how you name a compound will depend on the type of compound – whether it is an ion, molecular compound, acid, or base. For ions, the way you name the ion will depend on whether the compound is a cation or anion and whether or not it is monatomic, polyatomic, or a transition metal. Anions follow slightly more difficult naming conventions. Molecular compounds use Greek prefixes and will always start with the element furthest from Fluorine. Some molecular compounds have common names (such as water), and these are always used. Bases are simply named like ionic materials. Acids are named based on the suffix of the anion they are derived from. If the anion ends in -ate, the acid uses an -ic suffix. If the anion ends in -ite, the acid uses an -ous suffix. Taught by Professor Harman, this lesson was selected from a broader, comprehensive course, Chemistry. This course and others are available from Thinkwell, Inc. The full course can be found at www.thinkwell.com The full course covers atoms, molecules and ions, stoichiometry, reactions in aqueous solutions, gases, thermochemistry, Modern Atomic Theory, electron configurations, periodicity, chemical bonding, molecular geometry, bonding theory, oxidation-reduction reactions, condensed phases, solution properties, kinetics, acids and bases, organic reactions …