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Lesson 10 Chemical Equation and Balancing

lesson 10 ceb

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34 views2 pages

Lesson 10 Chemical Equation and Balancing

lesson 10 ceb

Uploaded by

maningdingkendrick
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Lesson 10

 CHEMICAL EQUATION AND


BALANCING

Chemists have learned that a chemical change always involves a


rearrangement of the ways in which the atoms are grouped. For example,
when the methane, CH4, in natural gas combines with oxygen, O2, in the air
and burns, carbon dioxide, CO2, and water, H2O, are formed. A chemical
change such as this is called a chemical reaction. We represent a chemical
reaction by writing a chemical equation in which the chemicals present before
the reaction (the reactants) are shown to the left of an arrow and the
chemicals formed by the reaction (the
products) are shown to the right of an
arrow. The arrow indicates the
direction of the change and is read as
“yields” or “produces”. The products
contain the same atoms as the
reactants but that the atoms are associated in different ways. That is, a
chemical reaction involves changing the ways the atoms are grouped.

Physical States

Besides specifying the compounds involved in the reaction, we often


indicate in the equation the physical states of the reactants and products by
using the following symbols:

State solid liquid gas dissolved in water


(in aqueous solution)
Symbol (s) (l) (g) (aq)

For example, when solid potassium reacts with liquid water, the
products are hydrogen gas and potassium hydroxide; the latter remains
dissolved in the water. From this information about the reactants and
products, we can write the equation for the reaction. Solid potassium is
represented by K(s); liquid water is written as H 2O(l); hydrogen gas contains
diatomic molecules and is represented as H 2(g); potassium hydroxide
dissolved in water is written as KOH(aq). So, the equation for the reaction is

Balancing Chemical Equation

It is important to recognize that in a chemical reaction, atoms are


neither created nor destroyed. All atoms present in the reactants must be

Module 1
accounted for among the products. In other words, there must be the same
number of each type of atom on the product side as on the reactant side of
the arrow. Making sure that the equation for a reaction obeys this rule is
called balancing the chemical equation for a reaction. The identities
(formulas) of the compounds must never be changed in balancing a chemical
equation. In other words, the subscripts in a formula cannot be changed, nor
can atoms be added to or subtracted from a formula. Most chemical equations
can be balanced by trial and error—that is, by inspection. Keep trying until
you find the numbers of reactants and products that give the same number of
each type of atom on both sides of the arrow.

For example, consider the reaction of hydrogen gas and oxygen gas to
form liquid water. First, we write the unbalanced equation from the
description of the reaction.
H2(g) + O2(g) → H2O(l)

We can see that this equation is unbalanced by counting the atoms on


both sides of the arrow.

We have one more oxygen atom in the reactants than in the product.
Because we cannot create or destroy atoms and because we cannot change
the formulas of the reactants or products, we must balance the equation by
adding more molecules of reactants and/or products. In this case we need
one more oxygen atom on the right, so we add another water molecule (which
contains one O atom). Then we count all of the atoms again.

We have balanced the oxygen atoms, but now the hydrogen atoms have
become unbalanced. There are more hydrogen atoms on the right than on the
left. We can solve this problem by adding another hydrogen molecule (H 2) to
the reactant side.

The equation is now balanced. We have the same numbers of hydrogen


and oxygen atoms represented on both sides of the arrow. Collecting like
molecules, we write the balanced equation as:

Module III

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