Balanced chemical equation?

What is a balanced chemical equation?

• What is a balanced chemical equation? Use the law of conservation of mass to explain why a chemical equation must be balanced? Andd please help me balance those: H2 (g) + O2 ...show more

• Answer:

  A balanced chemical equation is a description of a chemical process in symbols for molecules, which shows exact proportions of each type of molecule in both the reactants and products. The reason we need to balance chemical equations is that you cannot create, destroy, or change the element of an atom by ordinary chemical means. Therefore, a balanced chemical equation is written to show exactly how many of each type of molecule react so that each type of atom balances to the product side. H2 + O2 -> H2O I've done this hundreds of times so I know the answer. But I'll show you a formal procedure to teach you. Place a lower case letter in front of each compound. Skip any letter such as c, or s, because they look too much like their uppercase counterparts. These lower case letters are prototypes for what the answers will be. aH2 + bO2 -> dH2O Write an equation relating coefficients for each type of atom: H: 2*a = 2*d O: 2*b = d Arbitrarily set a to the lowest number which makes all the others a whole number: In this case, a = 2 Solve 3 equations (one for H, one for O, and the arbitrary one), 3 unknowns (a,b,d) by your favorite methods of algebra Results: a = 2 b = 1 d = 2 Re-assemble now that we know the coefficients. 2 H2 + O2 -> 2 H2O ------------------------------ N2 + H2 -> NH3 aN2 + bH2 -> dNH3 N: 2*a = d H: 2*b = 3*d Set a=1 arbitrarily, therefore d = 2 b = 3 Re-Construct equation: N2 + 3 H2 -> 2 NH3