Common Polyatomic Ions

How to Remember Most of Them:

__N__ick the __c__amel ate __c__lam for __s__upper in __P__hoenix

• 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”

__N__ick: NO3 -1 Nitrate

__C__amel: CO3 -2 Carbonate

__Cl__am: ClO3 -1 Chlorate

__S__upper: SO4 -2 Sulfate

__P__hoenix: 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

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

__N__ick the __cr__abby __c__amel ate __c__lam, __c__rabgrass and __m__i__n__ts for __s__upper in __P__hoenix

__Cr__abby: CrO4 -2 Cromate

__Cr__abgrass: Cr2O7 -2 Dichromate

__M__i__n__ts: MnO4 -1 Permanganate