Question

Apart from making life difficult for beginning chemistry students, why do chemists refer to CO2 as carbon dioxide, yet use the name tin(IV) oxide to describe SnO2?

Answer 1

Chemists refer to CO2 as carbon dioxide because it follows the naming method for molecular compounds, while they use the name tin(IV) oxide to describe SnO2 because it is an ionic compound.

Step-by-step explanation:

Chemists refer to CO2 as carbon dioxide because it follows the naming method for molecular compounds. The more metallic element (carbon) is named first, followed by the more nonmetallic element (oxygen) with the ending changed to -ide. The prefix mono- is usually dropped when only one atom of the first element is present, so CO is named carbon monoxide and CO2 is called carbon dioxide.

On the other hand, chemists use the name tin(IV) oxide to describe SnO2 because it is an ionic compound. In ionic compounds, the cation (tin) is named first followed by the anion (oxygen) with the ending changed to -ide. The roman numeral (IV) indicates the charge of the tin ion.