How to Apply IUPAC Nomenclature of Inorganic Substances
This post will introduce you to IUPAC Nomenclature and teach you the naming patterns of inorganic substances and compounds for Prelim Chemistry.
Nomenclature simply refers to a naming convention, the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC) naming conventions referred to as IUPAC nomenclature is used to systematically name various chemical compounds.Â
Naming Inorganic Compounds
An inorganic substance is generally a substance that does not contain both carbon AND hydrogen, e.g. HCl, CO2, NaCl, the definition will become more apparent after you study organic chemistry.
These can be named following the IUPAC naming conventions which ensure that people can first identify what elements are in a compound, second (for transition metals) identify which cation is being referred to (e.g. Iron II or Iron III) and finally, indicate the number of molecules of elements in the compound (non-ionic compounds use prefixes to show how many of each element are in the compound).
This video will introduce you to naming inorganic compounds.
This video contains some examples for naming inorganic compounds, make sure to have a go at answering each of them!
Here is another video with some examples of naming ionic compounds.Â
Want to learn more? Check out more of our Preliminary Chemistry resources here!
