A BALANCED EQUATION
Let's look at a basic example of a balanced equation:
C6H12O6 + 6 O2 => 6 CO2 + 6 H2O ?
If you were to supply the above equation into Chem Spread, this is
what you would see:
If you study the counts of each element
carefully, you will see that the same number of elements occur on each
side of the equation. For example, C occurs 6 times on each side.
O occurs 18 times on each side. You must add together the oxygen count
for each chemical on the left and the right sides respectively.
In each window there is a product of a chemical coefficient and the
count of a particular element in that chemical.
The count of each element must be equal on each side for the
equation to be balanced. You adjust the chemical coefficients in
the formula entry window as you do the exercises. That is
how you balance a
chemical equation. We may ignore the e- row because that is associated
with charge (superscripts).
Balancing equations with charges or ions will not be covered
here.
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