Question In regards to General Chemistry Naming

[omarski]

Hey I was taking a DAT bootcamp quiz and came across a question to ask me basically what happens when I add a base to a solution. The problem for me wasn't knowing what happens; rather, the question gave me the name of a base(sodium oxalate) I wasn't familiar with so I couldn't continue on with the quiz question.

Do these sort of occurrences happen on the actual general chemistry portion of the exam? If the formula was given I would've easily determined it was a base and went on from there, but it wasn't.

My apologies if this question has been asked numerous times, I did a quick search on here and google and maybe my wording was poor, but I couldn't find any answers.

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[Ari Rezaei]

You should definitely be familiar with common ion names and formulas, because you won't always get the name and the formula on the DAT. In this case, you could tell it was a base because it's the conjugate base of oxalic acid; to name the conjugate base for oxalic acid, you drop the -ic (oxalic acid) and add -ate (oxalate), which makes it an anion, and you add a cation (sodium in this case) to make it a full compound. So for example, acetic acid's conjugate base is acetate, nitric acid becomes nitrate, etc. There's a list of common ions you should be familiar with on the site under GC strategy.

 

[Artdent97]

Hey I was taking a DAT bootcamp quiz and came across a question to ask me basically what happens when I add a base to a solution. The problem for me wasn't knowing what happens; rather, the question gave me the name of a base(sodium oxalate) I wasn't familiar with so I couldn't continue on with the quiz question.

Do these sort of occurrences happen on the actual general chemistry portion of the exam? If the formula was given I would've easily determined it was a base and went on from there, but it wasn't.

My apologies if this question has been asked numerous times, I did a quick search on here and google and maybe my wording was poor, but I couldn't find any answers.

Wow, this is a good topic to consider. Thanks for posting.