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In chemistry, a formula unit is the smallest unit of a non-molecular substance, such as an ionic compound, covalent network solid, or metal. [1] [2] It can also refer to the chemical formula for that unit. Those structures do not consist of discrete molecules, and so for them, the term formula unit is used.
An example is the condensed molecular/chemical formula for ethanol, which is CH 3 −CH 2 −OH or CH 3 CH 2 OH. However, even a condensed chemical formula is necessarily limited in its ability to show complex bonding relationships between atoms, especially atoms that have bonds to four or more different substituents.
An example is boron carbide, whose formula of CB n is a variable non-whole number ratio, with n ranging from over 4 to more than 6.5. When the chemical compound of the formula consists of simple molecules, chemical formulas often employ ways to suggest the structure of the
The mole is widely used in chemistry as a convenient way to express amounts of reactants and amounts of products of chemical reactions. For example, the chemical equation 2 H 2 + O 2 → 2 H 2 O can be interpreted to mean that for each 2 mol molecular hydrogen (H 2) and 1 mol molecular oxygen (O 2) that react, 2 mol of water (H 2 O) form.
A compound's empirical formula is a very simple type of chemical formula. [27] It is the simplest integer ratio of the chemical elements that constitute it. [ 28 ] For example, water is always composed of a 2:1 ratio of hydrogen to oxygen atoms, and ethanol (ethyl alcohol) is always composed of carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen in a 2:6:1 ratio.
For most ionic compounds dissolved in water, the van 't Hoff factor is equal to the number of discrete ions in a formula unit of the substance. This is true for ideal solutions only, as occasionally ion pairing occurs in solution. At a given instant a small percentage of the ions are paired and count as a single particle.
Theoretical chemistry requires quantities from core physics, such as time, volume, temperature, and pressure.But the highly quantitative nature of physical chemistry, in a more specialized way than core physics, uses molar amounts of substance rather than simply counting numbers; this leads to the specialized definitions in this article.
A colorful example is cobalt(II) chloride, which turns from blue to red upon hydration, and can therefore be used as a water indicator.. The notation "hydrated compound⋅n H 2 O", where n is the number of water molecules per formula unit of the salt, is commonly used to show that a salt is hydrated.