Difference between magnesium sulfide and magnesium sulfate???

username3626988

Magnesium sulfide is MgS and magnesium sulfate is MgSO4 right???
But how and why are they different????

Reply 1

username3818132

MgSO4 contains oxygen as you can see. And MgS doesn't contain oxygen as you can see. They are both ionic compounds.

Reply 2

username3626988

i get that mgso4 contains oxygen and the other one doesn't.

But how???? Is magnesium reacted with sulfur and oxygen to get magnesium sulfate or something??

Reply 3

AuroraAustralis

isnt it that magnesium sulfide has one oxygen atom and magnesium sulfate has 4

Reply 4

carrotstar

Original post by princesslife

i get that mgso4 contains oxygen and the other one doesn't.

But how???? Is magnesium reacted with sulfur and oxygen to get magnesium sulfate or something??

Does it matter how they are produced? There are so many “slightly different” molecules out there that your life would waste away if you tried to work out why all of them can exist and how they came to be.

It’s simply because of whichever atoms are preferred and attracted in that situation to produce the substance.