Chemical formula

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Al2(SO4)3
Example of a chemical formula, aluminium sulfate

A chemical formula or molecular formula is a way of expressing information about the atoms that constitute a particular chemical compound.
The chemical formula identifies each constituent element by its chemical symbol and indicates the number of atoms of each element found in each discrete molecule of that compound. If a molecule contains more than one atom of a particular element, this quantity is indicated using a subscript after the chemical symbol (although 18th-century books often used superscripts) and also can be combined by more chemical elements. For example, methane, a small molecule consisting of one carbon atom and four hydrogen atoms, has the chemical formula CH₄. The sugar molecule glucose has six carbon atoms, twelve hydrogen atoms and six oxygen atoms, so its chemical formula is C₆H₁₂O₆.
Chemical formulas may be used in chemical equations to describe chemical reactions. For ionic compounds and other non-molecular substances an empirical formula may be used, in which the subscripts indicate the ratio of the elements.
The 19th-century Swedish chemist Jöns Jacob Berzelius worked out this system for writing chemical formulas.