Memorizing Cations and Anions: Tips and Tricks for Easier Recall

[William Bush]

I was just given the assignment to memorize a list of 51 different cations and anions (their names and symbols). Does anyone know of any tricks or clever ways to make them easier to memorize? Right now, I'm creating flash cards but I'm hoping that there may be a faster/easier way. Thanks in advance!

 

[NathanExplosion]

What are they? It's hard to give you a pattern to look for without knowing which ones you need to memorize.

 

[chemisttree]

Group them into monoatomic ions and polyatomic ions. Arrange the monoatomic ones into their place within the periodic table. You will see a trend that you can reproduce whenever you have free access to a periodic table. For cations, the suffix 'ous' is for the lower oxidation state and 'ic' is for the higher oxidation state. (ie. Ferrous +2 vs. Ferric +3 or Cuprous +1 vs Cupric +2) That should whittle down the list somewhat. From there on its brute force memorization...