Form element names as array

I know you can set up some form elements as array names so that when the form is submitted, you can access the values of those form elements, you can iterate through the array. So you can set up a bunch of form elements with the name form_elements[] and then when the form is submitted, you can just iterate through $form_elements to get the values. Can you do this with checkbox element types? I've tried but it seems like I cannot determine of the box has been checked or not. Has anyone done this with a set of checkboxes? If so, how were you able to get it to work? Any help would be greatly appreciated! Chris