This topic is to help you learn the basics of chemical names and formulas that you will need for your study of General Chemistry.
Why are names and formulas important to the study of chemistry?
Chemical names and formulas are the language of chemistry – and studying chemistry without an understanding of this language is like studying math without knowing symbols like +, =, 5. π, or ×.
More importantly, understanding names and formulas will make it much easier to predict products of chemical reactions, solve numerical chemistry problems, and understand many of the other concepts you will study in the class.
Goal for the topic
Your goal should be to master this by the date of the Unit 1 Exam (see date on Online Course Schedule).
For some CHEM 151 students (students who recently completed CHEM 125 or a high school class and got a solid foundation in chemical formulas and names from that course), this goal will be relatively easy. For others (those of you who have never studied chemistry or did so long ago you have forgotten it all) it will be more difficult. Most of you will be somewhere in between. It doesn’t matter where you start, it matters where you finish!
To provide incentive for you to work toward this and to give you an opportunity to earn points for this, and to ensure you work on it throughout the semester, there will be one 8 point questions on names and formulas (8 parts, 1 point each) on each of the 5 unit exams and the final exam.
