The Chemical Equation, Its Parts, Labels and State Symbols

Hello,

This post will discuss the chemical equation; what it is, what it does, and its parts.

The Chemical Equation

Chemistry is like learning a language.  Having said that, a complete sentence in chemistry is one which describes a chemical change, the chemical equation.

What It Is and Its Parts

The chemical equation is a shorthand way of describing a chemical reaction.  A chemical equation may consist of simple formulas or very complex, unwieldy formulas of compounds, but the rules for writing one remain the same.  These rules are as follows: Materials that will react are called reactants and their chemical formulas are listed horizonatally with "+" 's between them.  An arrow pointing to the right is drawn or typed next: Word processors will produce an arrow when typing two dashes immediately followed with a "greater than" symbol.  Any special conditions, such as heating or a required temperature, or the use of a catalyst are placed above the arrow.  The products formulas are listed next, horizontally, with "+"'s between them.  Then we must make sure the equation is balanced - Often certain coefficients need to be placed to the left of each (or some) formulas in the equation to make the number of reacting atoms of each element equal to the number of product atoms of each element.  If we do all that correctly then we have written a complete chemical equation.  The following illustration defines the main equation symbols, shows a general balanced equation, and then a specific example.

What a Chemical Reaction Equation Does For Us

As you can see from the above illustration example, a rather large amount of information is conveyed with a minimal amount of typing (or writing)!  We would have to do a lot more typing/writing to describe a more complex chemical equation, but the chemical equation itself would not be much more involved to type!

That's all for this post.  Have a good one!


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