Balancing Equations

When beginning to learn the important concepts and knowledge required to engage with the DP Curriculum it is important to have a basic understanding and experience of some of the ideas in each topic. At AIS the majority of students follow the iGCSE Coordinated Science curriculum as a precursor to studying DP chemistry and this site will use some of the objectives from the iGCSE to provide an area of prior learning - allowing those students who would like to refresh their knowledge or for new students to engage wth matter that has become prior to starting this course.

To this end students are expected to have a basic understanding of the C4 Stoichiometry unit

Balancing Symbol Equations

The above table summarises how we construct Formulae for the three types of bonding

Rule 1: Draw Boxes around all the Compounds - you cannot change anything i side the BOX!

Rule 2: Write the Number of Each Element on each side of the arrow

Rule 3: You CANNOT TAKE AWAY ATOMS - YOU CAN ONLY MULTIPLY THE COMPOUNDS (or the boxes) to balance the elements on both sides EG:

You can see here that we have Multiplied the NaCl by 2 - this means the number of atoms of each is doubled

Rule 4: Continue to multiply the formula until you have the same number of atoms of elements on both sides