Question

how would you write 2 molecules of oxygen and 5 molecules of nitrogen why?

Answer 1

2 molecules of oxygen = 2Osubscript2
5 molecules of nitrogen = 5Nsubscript2
it is written like this because oxygen and nitrogen are diatomic molecule. Each oxygen and nitrogen molecule has 2 atoms respectively.

Answer 2

2 molecules of oxygen will be written as 2O₂, and 5 molecules of nitrogen will be written as 5N₂.

• It can be seen here that, the given elements oxygen and nitrogen, are the diatomic gases.
• Diatomic molecules are those which always contain two chemically bonded atoms. It means, they can only be represented always as a group of two.
• Thus, oxygen and nitrogen are always represented as O₂ and N₂ respectively.
• Now, here the number of molecules of oxygen is 2, so, it will be written as 2O₂, while the number of molecules of nitrogen is 5, so, it will be written as 5N₂.