Common Polyatomic Ions

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How to Remember Most of Them:

Nick the camel ate clam for supper in Phoenix

• the underlined letters (first letters) represent the element
• the amount of consonants in the word represent how many Oxygens are in the compound
• the amount of vowels represents the charge
• ate represents how each of these compounds end in “ate”

Nick: NO3 -1 Nitrate

Camel: CO3 -2 Carbonate

Clam: ClO3 -1 Chlorate

Supper: SO4 -2 Sulfate

Phoenix: PO4-3 Phosphate

• if you subtract one oxygen from each of these it becomes “base” + “ite” instead of “ate”
• keeps the same charge
• there is a carbonite but its unstable so I won’t show you that (It would be CO2 -2)

Nitrate NO3 -1 : NO2 -1 Nitrite

Chlorate ClO3 -1 : ClO2 -1 Chlorite

Sulfate SO4 -2 : SO3 -2 Sulfite

Phosphate PO4-3 : PO3 -3 : Phosphite

• chlorate is super special
• not only does it have chlorate and chlorite, but if you take away 2 oxygens instead of 1, you get hyper chlorite
• and if you add one instead of take any away you get perchlorate

Perchlorate ClO4 -1

Chlorate ClO3 -1

Chlorite ClO2 -1

Hypochlorite ClO -1

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We can also add a few more words to this, but they don’t follow the subtraction of oxygen rules:

Nick the crabby camel ate clam, crabgrass and mints for supper in Phoenix

Crabby: CrO4 -2 Cromate

Crabgrass: Cr2O7 -2 Dichromate

Mints: MnO4 -1 Permanganate

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