Like, if you look at the back of a shampoo bottle or something, there’s always a ridiculously long name for an ingredient.Are these sorts of ingredients able to be broken down into elements? Kind of like how dihydrogen monoxide is just the chemical name for water.
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Yes. Everything is just made of different combinations of elements and we can break any chemical down into those elements. Just depending on the chemical it may be easier or harder to break down.
For example, we can break water (H2O) into hydrogen and oxygen (H2 and O2) but just running electricity through it.
However something like sucrose (sugar) is C12H22O11 more complex and we usually break it down into carbon dioxide (CO2) and water. But CO2 is much harder to break down because it’s such a low energy molecule, but we can dissolve it in water to make carbonic acid (H2CO3)
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