Question

A. What is a chemical symbol of an element? What information does it convey?
B. Write the chemical formula of the sulphates of Aluminium, Ammonium and Zinc.

Answer 1

A.

A chemical symbol is the short form which stands for an atom of a specific element or the abbreviations used for the names of elements.

• It represents a specific element.

• It represents one atom of an element.

• A symbol represents how many atoms are present in one gram (gm) atom.

• The chemical symbol of an element represents the mass of an atom of that element.
  
  B.

  Valencies of aluminium, ammonium and zinc are 3, 1 and 2, respectively.

  The valency of sulphate is 2.

  Hence, chemical formulae of the sulphates of aluminium, ammonium and zinc are $A{l}_2{\left(S{O}_4\right)}_3,\left(N{H}_4\right)2S{O}_{4}andZnS{O}_4.$