science help: What is the difference between a sulphide and a sulphate? - Help.com

The difinitions of both below, you choose the differences yourself.

http://medical-dictionary.thefreedict…

http://www.thefreedictionary.com/sulp…

sulphide - S02 has one sulphur and 2 oxygens

sulphate - S04 has more than 3 oxygens (I think?)

Panterare, I think you may be mistaken. Check the wikipedia. As far as I know generally ide’s have only the one substance attached to them. EG hydrogen sulfide. Sulfur cation with a charge of 2. Its most re

phates generally seem to have 3 or 4 oxygen attached to the cation. in the case of sulphate it is SO4 2-

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sulphide

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sulphate

meh, I don’t trust wikipedia; i used another website but I can’t do chemistry anyway!!!!

It matches what I remember from chemistry, but you can try googling it. I know that H2S is hydrogen sulphide, and the H2SO4 is sulfuric acid, or hydrogen sulfate. Wikipedia is generally great for science and engineering.

Kl, thanks you seem like a knowledgeable sort of person!

hey thanks!

You are soooo close betta, sulfide is the ion of sulfur, so its sulfur missing 2 electrons (S2-). Sulfate on the other hand is a polyatomic ion which means it acts like a individual atom ion. And as stated before its SO4(2-) four oxygens and a negative 2 charge.

I agree with you Rico, though I don’t think I actually contradicted what you said anyway. I would put it the way I chose because the way that you put it omits the possibility of other polyatomic sulfur cations such as sulfite and persulfite. I also see that I didn’t realized I accidentally butchered my own previous post when I was writing it. Oh well. I think we are clear now…

ide = lowest oxidation number but still an ion
ate = most stable polyatomic ion including oxygen.

No, you didn’t contradict me. In chemistry there is varying degrees of “rightness”. In this case it is more right to define the difference as monoatomic vs polyatomic, using those words. Also I wouldn’t say sulfate is the “most stable polyatomic ion”, that means nothing. It might have a lower free energy but stable means that it can sit on a shelf and not do anything.

so what you said is correct its just one could lose points on a test with incorrect wording.

side note, our poor friend sulfite wasn’t mentioned SO3 note the -ite ending

bmat81 wrote:
I just need to know what the difference is between sulfate/sulfite and sulphate. i am allergic to sulfate and sulfite, so i need to know if i can use medicine with sulphates in them.

That would be a question for your doctor. Can’t do online diagnosis.

I have to use sodium metabisulfate for an experiment and I have not it, but I have sodium metabisulfite, so I would like to know if I can use it. I precise that I want to determine the quantity of phosphates in a solution but there is arsenic in it, so I want to treat this solution in order to eliminate this arsenic and it’s for this elimination that I have to use metabisulfate. Thanks for your reponse and sorry for my english (I’m french lol)