[jayson86]

Anyone here know any good methods of memorizing polyatomics ? I seem to be having great difficulty memorizing them. ANyone have any insiders tip that might help me. Thanks in advance.


Great Site By the Way...

[Borek]

Posted by Michael Porter and June Strohsahl on some other forum:

> One of my students gave me a way that she was learning the names of  
> the "ic" acids.  She lines them up as Chloric, Nitric, Carbonic,  
> Sulfuric, Phosphoric, and Boric acids.  Then she use the memory  
> device:  Clearly nobody can spell peanut butter.  To the side she  
> puts the number of hydrogens in each (1, 1, 2, 2, 3, 3) and the  
> other side the number of oxygens (3, 3, 3, 4, 4, 3).  Surprizingly  
> most students can have instant recall with this method.

When I first started teaching I came up with "Chlorine never causes  
simple problems" for the first five of these (we didn't include  
boric). My students thought that was kind of boring, so they came up  
with their own. Some good ones from over the years:

Clean nostrils can smell perfume/perspiration
Clinton never considered sexual propriety
Closet nudists can't streak publicly

Hopefully they will not sue me for copyright infringement

[arnyk]

I remember them by first knowing that the charges count down from left to right and the number of oxygens remains the same for that period.  So I remember the first polyatomic from each period being CO3^2- and PO4^3- as "2,3,3,4".  2,3 meaning a charge of 2- and 3 oxygens for a carbonate ion and 3- charge with 4 oxygens for phosphate.  Then you simply count down the charges from left to right, keeping the oxygens the same.

CO3^2-  NO3^1-
          PO4^3- SO4^2- ClO4^-

The exception being chlorate which is actually per-chlorate following that progressive pattern.  Chlorate would be ClO3^-.  Hope that helps, it works out alot faster in my head when I'm doing calculations.