Familiar Inorganic Compounds

Some compounds are better known by their common names than by their systematic chemical names. Familiar examples are listed in Table 2.10. 

TABLE 2.10 Common and Systemaric Name Compounds ot Soir.o ] mniliar Inorgarm.  

CaCOa Marble, chalk, limestone Calcium carbonate 

NaHCOj Baking soda Sodium hydrogen carbonate 

MgS04 - 7H,0 Epsom salt Magnesium sulfate heptahydrate 

---

TABLE 2.10 Common and S stcmatic Names of Some Familiar Inorganic Compounds ... 

Other liquid inorganic compounds show the auto-dissociation characteristic of water and liquid ammonia for example, dinitrogen tetroxide (p. 231), as well as undergoing the more familiar homolytic dissociation... 

A large number of inorganic compounds crystallize as hydrates. One of the most familiar examples is copper sulfate pentahydrate, CuS04-5H20. Like most hydrates, when this material is heated it loses water, but because all of the H20 molecules are bound in different ways, some are lost more easily than others. Therefore, as the solid is heated the reactions observed first are... 

Molecular motion in solids has been the object of many studies in the field of physical chemistry of polymers , but dynamic processes in molecular crystals of organic and inorganic compounds are less well investigated. In fact, the average chemist is not aware of the fact that processes like internal rotation or ring inversion proceed in solids quite often with barriers which are not very different from those found for these types of internal motion in the liquid state. Thus, for the equatorial axial ring inversion of fluorocyclohexane values of 42.4 and 43.9 kJ mol have been measured in the liquid and the solid, respectively. The familiar thermal ellipsoids of individual atoms obtained from X-ray studies are qualitative indicators of molecular motion in the crystal, but a more quantitative study of such processes is only possible after appropriate solid state NMR techniques are applied. 

The most important consideration in this connection is the fact that while Chemical Abstracts does not make its Formula Index the exclusive index of organic compounds or even the primary index of compounds, it does enter all compounds by formulas and thus gives the inorganic chemist the same consideration as that given the organic chemist without any neglect either of the organic chemist or of the chemist who is not prepared readily to calculate empirical formulas for complex yet familiarly named compounds. 

The common acids are other examples of inorganic compounds that are known by common rather than formal names. Some names of common acids and bases that you will use frequently in chemistry laboratory experiments are listed in Table 5.7. Although they often do not follow the rules you have been learning, they will soon become so familiar that their formulas and names will be easy to remember. 

The removal of one or more components from a gas mixture by absorption is probably the most important and familiar operation in the control of gaseous pollutant emissions. Though most often used for the control of inorganic gases, absorption can also be used for recovery of organic compounds. Absorption in-... 

The starting point of this article is the discovery by Rosenberg and his collaborators of the activity of certain platinum compounds as antitumour agents (7). Here we wish to introduce the chemistry of these agents, which will be relatively familiar to inorganic chemists, but not to chemists and biochemists of other disciplines. At the same time we wish the inorganic chemist to see the relevance of the chemistry to biological fields. 

---