Nature Chemical Biology is committed to enhancing interdisciplinary communication and features online content to increase the accessibility of chemical information for our readers. The adage that “a ...

While we refer to substances by their common names in everyday life, all these substances have a chemical name and a chemical formula that scientists and researchers use. The system of chemical naming ...

A compound is a substance that is formed when two or more different chemical elements bond together in a fixed ratio, like water (H₂O) from hydrogen and oxygen or salt (NaCl) from sodium and chlorine.

For example, magnesium oxide is made up of two elements, magnesium and oxygen. Its formula is MgO. This shows that it has one atom of magnesium for every one atom of oxygen.

In chemistry, the chemical nomenclature of ionic and molecular compounds uses a systematic approach of prefixes to indicate the number of each element present in the compound. This chemical naming of ...