Balancing the Chemical Equations – Part 1

Table of Contents

• Balancing a Chemical Equation
• Summary
• What’s Next?

In the previous segment, we learnt about balanced and unbalanced chemical equations. In this segment, we will learn about balancing the chemical equations.

How to balance a chemical equation?

To balance a chemical equation we need to follow a few steps. Let us consider the unbalanced equation ?_? + ?_? → ?_??to understand these steps.

1. Make boxes around the reactants and products as shown in the figure. The element or compound inside the box cannot be changed.

+

H2

O2

H2O

1. Draw a table with the name of the elements and number of atoms as shown below.

Elements	Number of Atoms in Reactants	Number of Atoms in Products
H	2	2
O	2	1

Table 1

According to table 1, the number of Oxygen atoms on the reactants side is Not Equal

to the number of atoms on the products side.

1. Now, multiply the ??? with 2 to balance the number of atoms of Oxygen.

H2

O2

+ 2

H2O

According to table 2, the number of Hydrogen atoms on the reactants side is Not Equal to the number of atoms on the products side