Will the Real Sodium Biphoshate Formula Please Stand Up

[rjw at aluxs_micro.lucent.com (Ronald Wozniak)]

Sorry for the second request, but the first one got messed up.

I'm doing a science project with my son on growing algae.
I wanted to use Sodium Biphosphate (pH Down) made by Wardley
as a source of phosphate to accelerate the algae's growth.
I thought it would be easy to mix water and sodium biphosphate
to reach a known concentration, if I only knew it's chemical
formula and, of course, the atomic weight of each element in that formula.
However, I tried looking up the formula in several references but
couldn't find it!!

 I can make a guess, since sodium bicarbonate is NaHCO3.

Would sodium biphosphate be (in ASCII without subscripts)

           (2Na)HPO4 or Na(2H)PO4  ???

Please respond for this is driving me nuts.

Another question that I'm curious about...  Why do they call
baking soda == sodium bicarbonate when there's only one carbon atom
in the formula? I thought "bi" meant two; there's no "2" in NaHCO3.

---------------
Ron Wozniak  Allentown PA, USA
rjwozniak at lucent_com

---

• Prev by Date: Re: Aquatic Plants Digest V2 #1096
• Next by Date: QYNGA
• Prev by thread: Re: Aquatic Plants Digest V2 #1096
• Next by thread: RE: Dennerle philosophy
• Index(es):
  • Date
  • Thread