we mentioned that there are two types of acids commonly used in the laboratory one of them being binary acids like hydrochloric acid these consist of only hydrogen and one other non-metallic element the other type of acid we could use would be an oxy acid oxy acids are acids that are comprised of hydrogen ox oygen and at least one other element with these the atoms must be bonded in such a way so as to result in at least one acidic hydrogen atom take for example nitric acid this is the acid derived from the nitrate ion which results when the nitrate ion is combined with a hydrogen ion which we call a proton notice that this molecule consists of only hydrogen oxygen and nitrogen we can also form an acid from the nitrite ion which will be called nitrous acid so we can see that unlike the binary acids which begin with the prefix Hydro for oxy acids we start by referring to the element in the acid that is not hydrogen or oxygen and then we add a suffix that depends on the suffix of the polyatomic ion an ion that ends in at will result in an acid that ends in ic if the ion ends in it the acid will end in ous that's how we get sulfuric and sulfurous acid by adding two protons to the sulfate and sulfite ions and here are acetic acid carbonic acid and phosphoric acid derived from the acetate car carbonate and phosphate ions notice that some oxy acids will have multiple hydrogen atoms Each of which can be lost in sequential acidbase reactions whereas some acids only have one hydrogen atom but can vary in the number of oxygen atoms look at the examples of chloris acid and chloric acid as well as hypochlorous acid and perchloric acid which range between one oxygen atom and four oxygen atoms we will need a combination of suffixes and prefixes to name them all and now we know about binary acids and oxy acids