In it, the reaction is expressed by writing down the names of the reactants and the product in plain English. In chemistry, an equation is the most basic way of expressing a chemical reaction. Let’s learn more about all these three types of equations. The skeleton equation is the intermediate step, which enables the conversion of an equation expressed in words to an actual balanced chemical equation. The basic process of writing a chemical reaction involves first writing the word equation, then the skeleton equation, and finally the balanced equation. The arrow indicates that reactants ‘give rise to’ or ‘produce’ the products. Note that, as shown above, typically, reactants are written on the left, while products on the right side. Thus, a chemical reaction can be expressed as: The products are the molecules that are obtained as a result of a chemical reaction. The reactants are the original elements (atoms and molecules), which, under suitable conditions, react chemically with each other. The most basic elements of any chemical reaction are the reactants and the products. Thus, for example, while freezing water to ice is merely a physical process, the chemical combination of sodium and chlorine gas which results in the formation of sodium chloride (salt) is a chemical reaction. In chemical reactions, atomic/molecular bonds are formed, broken or rearranged, so that a chemically different product is formed. It is important to note that, chemical reactions are different from processes like melting or freezing, which are essentially physical processes wherein only the state of the matter changes. In chemistry, a chemical reaction is said to have taken place when two or more elements react with each other to produce a new element/s. But before that, we shall have a quick overview at the fundamentals of writing a chemical reaction.
#CHEMICAL EQUATION BALANCER USING WORDS HOW TO#
In the following lines, we shall find out how to write a skeleton equation. They are viewed in chemistry as an important step which ultimately leads to the development of a complete chemical equation. Skeleton equations are a form of chemical equations which are a quick and convenient way of writing a mathematical equation. For this purpose, scientists around the world make use of chemical equations. Needless to say, therefore, it is of utmost importance that we study how these important chemical reactions take place.īut to be able to study the literally thousands of possible chemical reactions, there needs to be a proper way of representing them in writing, which is in accordance to the laws of nature, and which is mathematically correct. These basic forms of matter react with each other chemically to form all the complex living and non-living things that we see around us. We ourselves and indeed the whole world are made of the 118 identified elements in the periodic table. The rest of the elements can be represented in the mono-atomic form. Therefore, one must take care to use proper formula for these elements while substituting them in skeleton equations. Other diatomic elements are H2, F2, Cl2, Br2, I2, O2, and N2―all of which are gases. Oxygen is a diatomic element which is always found as O2 in nature. Click here to find out what skeleton equations are, and how they are written. This matches what happens in the reaction.Skeleton equations are one of the basic means of representing a chemical reaction. You can see that now there are two copper atoms and two oxygen atoms on each side. To make things equal, you need to adjust the number of units of some of the substances until you get equal numbers of each type of atom on both sides. Notice that there are unequal numbers of each type of atom on the left-hand side compared with the right-hand side. If the words shown above are replaced by the correct chemical formulae, it will result in an unbalanced equation, as shown here.