When it comes to naming oxy acids, it's first important to remember your polyatomic ions. Now, if you don't remember your polyatomic ions or you haven't watched my videos on them, I suggest you pause this video and go back and take a look at those videos first. Then come back and we can tackle naming oxy acids together.

All right, so for those of you who are ready, let's go. We're going to say here rules for naming oxy acids. Rule one. If the polyatomic ion ends with -ate, then change the ending when it's in its acid form to -ic acid. Here we have a memory tool that'll help us. So here we're going to say I⁸ and acid and it was icky. Now don't go biting into acids or eating them in any way, but just remember that -ate goes with icky.

OK, so in its polyatomic ion form, it's -ate, but in its acid form we change the ending to -ic acid. So here we have H⁺ with NO₃^-. Remember NO₃^- is your nitrate ion. When I combine them together to give me HNO₃, that is our oxy acid form. Here the -ate ending changes to -ic acid, so nitrate becomes nitric acid.

But remember we also have polyatomic ions that end with -ite. What do we do in those situations? Well, we're going to say if the polyatomic ion ends with -ite then in its acid form we'll change the ending to -ous acid. And again, we have a great memory tool, so I only bite into delicious, into things that are delicious. So this will help us remember if we have a polyatomic ion that ends with -ite in its acid form it becomes -ous ending -ous acid.

So here we have H⁺ with NO₂^-. NO₂^- is our nitrite ion. When it combines with H⁺ we get HNO₂ which is our oxy acid form. The -ite ending changes to -ous acid, so nitrite becomes nitrous acid. So again, unless you know your polyatomic ions, it gets pretty tricky in terms of naming the oxy acid form. So first make sure you've mastered the polyatomic ions and then we can start naming oxy acids.

Now that we've seen the rules for this, let's continue on with some questions and test what we've learned.