cosmic-chris Posted January 25, 2008 Share Posted January 25, 2008 Hi can't remember how to balance chemical equations,can any one shed some light on the easiest method for this? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
insane_alien Posted January 25, 2008 Share Posted January 25, 2008 count up the atoms on each side of the equation, make sure they're equal. thats about it. it becomes intuition after a while. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cosmic-chris Posted January 25, 2008 Author Share Posted January 25, 2008 So H2 + O2 ----> H20 why are we missing one oxygen?or am i missing somthing ? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
insane_alien Posted January 25, 2008 Share Posted January 25, 2008 well you need to compensate. you need 2 O's on the right hand side so multiply that side by 2. then you'll need 2 mor H's on the left side so multiply that part by 2. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cosmic-chris Posted January 25, 2008 Author Share Posted January 25, 2008 Methane gas reaction CH4 + O2 -------> CO2 + H2O As there are four oxygen on the right side of the equation and four hydrogen on the left we need to balance that out so it would become, CH4 + 2 O2 ------> CO2 + 2 H2O Would this equation be correct if noy let me know where i am going wrong. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
insane_alien Posted January 25, 2008 Share Posted January 25, 2008 looks good. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cosmic-chris Posted January 25, 2008 Author Share Posted January 25, 2008 And the water equation would be 2 H2 + O2 -----> 2 H2O is that correct? I think i have got the hang of it again thanks insane_alien Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
insane_alien Posted January 25, 2008 Share Posted January 25, 2008 yeah, its all good. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
thedarkshade Posted January 25, 2008 Share Posted January 25, 2008 If you get to more tricky equations, I'd suggest you to use oxidation numbers. You figure out the changes in oxidation states and then place those number in the molecules in the equation. Watch: [ce]KMnO4 + H2O2 + H2SO4 -> K2SO4 + MnSO4 + O2 + H2O[/ce] it's kinda hard to balance without looking at the oxidation number in this case. The changes that happen here are: [ce]Mn^{+7} ->Mn^{+2}[/ce] so it takes 5 electrons [ce]O^{-1} -> O^{0}[/ce] so it loses 1 but since O is a double-atomic molecule we use 2. Then we just change the places and now where we have Mn we put 2 and where we have O we put 5, se we have: [ce]2KMnO4 + 5H2O2 + 3H2SO4 -> K2SO4 + 2MnSO4 + 5O2 + 8H2O[/ce] It's a bit tricky but very useful!] Cheers, Shade Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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