Example H1, seventh edition.

[gabbym]

Example H1 under Fundamentals H in the seventh edition of the textbook asks you to write and balance the chemical equation for the combustion of liquid hexane, C6H14, to gaseous carbon dioxide gas and gaseous water. While I know of the top of my head that carbon dioxide is CO2, and that water would be H2O, I would not know how to write the formula for liquid hexane if I was asked to. So I was wondering if we would ever be asked to write the formula for uncommon compounds, such as liquid hexane, or if we would only be asked to write the formula for the common compounds such as water and carbon dioxide.

[705152867]

Dr. Lavelle said we'd kind of become familiar with uncommon compounds as we go along, so I don't think we're expected to know them- at least, not right away.

[Tony Ong 3K]

If you look in Dr. Lavelle's Outline 1: Review of Chemical and Physical Principles objectives that we should know by the end of the section, it just states that we should be able to "write symbols for elements given their names." So I'm sure at this point in time, we do not need to memorize any difficult molecular formulas or even uncommon elements either.