Water for life

5 Molecules and covalent bonding

6 Chemical language

6.1 Introduction

The previous sections in this course include many terms which may have been unfamiliar to you: for example, atom, element, compound, molecule and bond. Chemistry has a language all of its own and grasping the terminology can be as much of a problem as understanding the chemistry itself. In Section 6, you will consider the language of chemistry before returning to the examination of bonding.