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A balanced equation is a chemical equation in which mass is conserved and there are equal numbers of atoms of each element on both sides of the equation. Learn how to balance chemical equations in this reading.
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Introduction to Balancing Equations
How to balance chemical equations. We'll start out with examples that show the concepts behind balancing chemical equations. We will start with a word equation, and then write a chemical equations, and then visualize the atoms and molecules and how they change. To figure out if the equations is balanced, we look at the number and type of atoms on each side of the arrow. If the number and type of atom is not the same on both sides, the equation in unbalanced. We need to change the number of one or more of the compounds in order to get the atoms to balance. We do this by placing coefficients (numbers) in front of each of the compounds. When balancing equations, you cannot ever change the subscripts of a compound.
Balancing Equations Practice Problems
Equation balancing will make sense! Here, we will do a bunch of practice problems for balancing chemical equations. We'll see the process or trial and error and the steps that you have to go through to balance chemical equations. You start by keeping track of the number of atoms on both sides of the equation, and then you add coefficients to one or more of the elements and compounds to make the number of atoms equal.
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