How to interperet the meaning of chemical names?

for example chromate

its symbol is CrO42鈭?br>
with the four coming to the bottom right of the O

and the -2 coming to the top right or the 4

so does tha mean that there are six oxygens and four are neutral and 2 are negative?

need an explanation. thanks|||This comes down to the very basics of chemistry. It means that there are four oxygen atoms, and that the whole ion has a net charge of -2. Specifically, each of two oxygens of the ion has an extra lone pair of electrons which, in a neutral situation, would be shared with another atom. If the compound was neutral there would be no charge on it. However, in this specific case, to be neutral you would need to add two positve charges (to balance out the 2 negative charges). An example would be to use two sodium cations (2Na+) and you would then get the neutral salt Na2CrO4. Notice now that it is neutral, there is no accompanying superscripted number.



So basically, everytime you see a superscripted number after the formula, you know that it is an ion; a CATION has a positive charge and an ANION has a negative charge. Anytime you see a subscripted number, this is an indication of the number of atoms. As an example consider sulfuric acid (H2SO4), we can see that there are 2 hydrogens, 1 sulfur, and 4 oxygens.



Hope this helps.|||The 2- is a superscript, meaning the charge of the chromate ion is negative 2. There are one chromium atom and 4 oxygen atoms. The name is "chromate," and you would probably see this ion bonded to another atom or polyatomic ion.|||The four means there are four oxygen atoms in the molecule, and that overall the molecule has a negative charge of two. You should google chemistry nomenclature and do a quick read, it'll help a lot :o)|||A subscript number indicates how many of the atom are present, unless the number of atoms is 1, in which case there is no number shown. The superscript indicates the charge of the ion. If there is no number in superscript, there is no charge and the object is a molecule, not an ion. So in this case, there are four oxygen atoms and one chromium atom. The charge of the ion is -2. (The polarity of the charge is given after the number. I don't know why.)

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