What is hydrochloric acid in chemistry?
Hydrochloric acid is a complex chemical composed of hydrogen and chlorine atoms. This chemical is designated as “HCl”. Such a record of the chemical formula of a complex substance provides a lot of useful information:
1) What atoms of chemical elements are part of the substance (in this case, hydrogen – H – and chlorine – Cl);
2) How many atoms of each of the chemical elements that make up a molecule of a substance are contained in the substance (in hydrochloric acid, as can be seen from the formula, there is 1 hydrogen atom and 1 chlorine atom);
3) Information on the molecular weight of a substance, if the relative atomic masses of the chemical elements that make up the substance are known (for hydrochloric acid, the relative molecular weight is 36).