Chemical nomenclature

Chemical nomenclature is a way of giving a name to a chemical substance made of different kinds of atoms. It helps scientists know exactly what kind of chemical they are talking about when they write or speak about it. The name of the substance made up of different atoms is made up of small words that can tell what kinds of atoms it has and how many. For example, if a substance has one atom of carbon and two atoms of hydrogen, it would be called "methane" (which stands for "me-thane"). The prefix "me" tells us that there is one carbon atom and the "-thane" tells us that it has two hydrogen atoms.