1. Chemical Symbols and Chemical Formulas

2. Chemical Symbols Chemical symbols are used by chemists to represent the elements The symbols are either a single, upper case letter or an upper case letter followed by lower case letters The symbols are usually the first letter of the element’s name Some symbols are based on old, Latin names or other languages

3. Examples Hydrogen is represented by “H.” Whereas helium (which also starts with h) is represented by “He” gold is represented by “Au.” This is because the old word for gold is aureum. This goes for such elements as lead which has the chemical symbol “Pb.” It used to called plumbium. Finally, there is tungsten. It’s symbol is “W” because the symbol comes from the German word for the element which is wolfram.

4. Subscripts and Coefficients Subscripts, which are found below and to the right of a chemical symbol, indicate that there are that many atoms and that they are bonded together H 2 O We are all familiar with this. This means that there are 2 hydrogen atoms chemically bonded to one oxygen atom or this...

6. Coefficients Coefficients are placed before a chemical expression and are used as multipliers They tell you how many of each term there are 2H is very different from H 2

7. Let’s Wrap It Up This is H 2 This is 2H

8. This is 2H 2

9. H 2 SO 4 This is sulfuric acid. How many atoms are bonded together to make this compound? 3(H 2 SO 4 ) Now how many atoms are there? How many molecules of sulfuric acid are there?