What is the difference between a chemical symbol and a chemical formula?

Answer 1

The chemical symbol is used only for chemical elements; the chemical formula is for molecules.

Ex.: Na is the chemical symbol of sodium and NaCl is the chemical formula of sodium chloride.

Answer 2

A chemical symbol represents a single atom of an element, but a formula represents a chemical entity with constant composition that contains at least two atoms.
A chemical symbol represents a single atom of a chemical element, but a chemical formula represents the types and numbers of atoms in a chemical entity larger than a single atom. The entity is called a molecule if the compound is covalently bonded and a formula unit if the entity is ionically bonded.

Answer 3

A symbol is used as a short hand to represent a single element for example oxygen is O, phosphorus is P, iron is Fe.

A formula uses chemical symbols to show which elements are in a molecule or compound and how much. For example the oxygen molecule is O2, meaning there are two oxygen atoms, methane is CH4, meaning there is one carbon atom and 4 hydrogen atoms, and magnesium sulfate is MgSO4, meaning that there is one magnesium atom, one sulfur atom, and 4 oxygen atoms.

Answer 4

A chemical symbol represents a single atom of an element, but a chemical formula gives the composition of a compound, or of an element that exists in polyatomic molecules, by including all the chemical symbols of each kind of atom in the compound and affixing a subscript number to each symbol for which more than one atom is required to form the compound or polyatomic element.

Answer 5

A chemical symbol is the symbol for a single element. For example, H is the chemical symbol for hydrogen and O is the symbol for oxygen. A chemical formula represents one or more elements joined in a molecule or organic compound. It contains the chemical symbols of the elements and subscripts to indicate the number of atoms of each element in a molecule, or the smallest whole number ratio of elements in an ionic compound. For example, H2 represents a molecule of hydrogen gas in which there are two atoms of hydrogen per molecule. H2O represents a molecule of water, in which there are two hydrogen atoms and one oxygen atom per molecule.

Answer 6

A chemical symbol represents an element's identity using one or two letters (e.g., H for hydrogen, O for oxygen), while a chemical formula represents a compound's composition using the symbols of the atoms present and the number of each type of atom (e.g., H2O for water, CO2 for carbon dioxide).

Answer 7

The symbol of an element represents that element (e.g. Molybdenum - Mo)

The formula of an element is how many atoms of that element there are (e.g. 2 Oxygens in a pair - O2)

Answer 8

Formula is made out of chemical symbols