Chemical formulae

Al₂(SO₄)₃

Aluminium sulfate has the chemical formula Al2(SO4)3. The form of aluminium sulfate hexadecahydrate is Al2(SO4)3•16H2O.

${\displaystyle {\ce {H-{\overset {\displaystyle H \atop |}{\underset {| \atop \displaystyle H}{C}}}-{\overset {\displaystyle H \atop |}{\underset {| \atop \displaystyle H}{C}}}-{\overset {\displaystyle H \atop |}{\underset {| \atop \displaystyle H}{C}}}-{\overset {\displaystyle H \atop |}{\underset {| \atop \displaystyle H}{C}}}-H}}}$

Structural formula for n-butane. This is not a chemical formula. Examples of chemical formulas for n-butane are the empirical formula C2H5, the molecular formula C4H10 and the condensed (or semi-structural) formula CH3CH2CH2CH3.

A chemical formula is a way of expressing information about the proportions of atoms that constitute a particular chemical compound, using a single line of chemical element symbols, numbers, and sometimes also other symbols, such as parentheses, dashes, brackets, commas and plus (+) and minus (−) signs. These are limited to a single typographic line of symbols, which may include subscripts and superscripts. A chemical formula is not a chemical name, and it contains no words. Although a chemical formula may imply certain simple chemical structures, it is not the same as a full chemical structural formula. Chemical formulas can fully specify the structure of only the simplest of molecules and chemical substances, and are generally more limited in power than are chemical names and structural formulas.

The simplest types of chemical formulas are called empirical formulas, which use letters and numbers indicating the numerical proportions of atoms of each type. Molecular formulas indicate the simple numbers of each type of atom in a molecule, with no information on structure. For example, the empirical formula for glucose is CH₂O (twice as many hydrogen atoms as carbon and oxygen), while its molecular formula is C₆H₁₂O₆ (12 hydrogen atoms, six carbon and oxygen atoms).

Sometimes a chemical formula is complicated by being written as a condensed formula (or condensed molecular formula, occasionally called a "semi-structural formula"), which conveys additional information about the particular ways in which the atoms are chemically bonded together, either in covalent bonds, ionic bonds, or various combinations of these types. This is possible if the relevant bonding is easy to show in one dimension. An example is the condensed molecular/chemical formula for ethanol, which is CH₃-CH₂-OH or CH₃CH₂OH. However, even a condensed chemical formula is necessarily limited in its ability to show complex bonding relationships between atoms, especially atoms that have bonds to four or more different substituents.

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