What is the significance of chemical formula

Important Solutions 1. Question Bank Solutions Time Tables. Advertisement Remove all ads. Short Note. What is the significance of the formula of a substance? Solution Show Solution The significance of the chemical formula of any substance is as follows: A chemical formula of a substance element or compound represents its name. A chemical formula provides important information on the chemical makeup of any substance element or compound. It names all the elements present in the molecule.

A chemical formula also provides important information on the number of atoms of each constituent element of the molecule of the substance.

A chemical formula represents one mole of molecules of the substance element or compound , which is 6. In this case, the empirical formula would be multiplied by 6 to get to the molecular formula. Molecular formulas contain no information about the arrangement of atoms. Because of this, one molecular formula can describe a number of different chemical structures.

A structural formula is used to indicate not only the number of atoms, but also their arrangement in space. A structural formula is not as compact and easy to communicate, but it provides information that the molecular formula does not about the relative positioning of atoms and the bonding between atoms.

Compounds that share a chemical formula but have different chemical structures are known as isomers, and they can have quite different physical properties. Boundless vets and curates high-quality, openly licensed content from around the Internet.

This particular resource used the following sources:. Skip to main content. Atoms, Molecules, and Ions. Search for:. Molecular Formulas. Learning Objective Identify the molecular formula of a compound given either its name or structural formula. Key Points A molecular formula consists of the chemical symbols for the constituent elements followed by numeric subscripts describing the number of atoms of each element present in the molecule. The empirical formula represents the simplest whole-integer ratio of atoms in a compound.

Molecular formulas are compact and easy to communicate; however, they lack the information about bonding and atomic arrangement that is provided in a structural formula.