Chemical Reactions Flashcards
What is a chemical reaction?
The conversion of one or more chemicals, known as reactants, into one or more new chemicals, known as products
What happens during every chemical reaction?
Chemical bonds between atoms in the reactants are broken and atoms are rearranged and form new bonds to create the products
What is a word equation?
A chemical equation that any reaction can be represented by using the names of the chemicals involved in this form: reactants-products
What is an example of a word equation?
Water-Hydrogen Gas+Oxygen Gas
What do word equations not tell us?
What is going on at atomic level
What are the letters in a chemical formula?
The symbols for the elements that make up the substance
What do subscripted numbers tell you?
The relative number of atoms of each element
What does H2O tell us?
That each molecule of water is made up of two hydrogen atoms bound to one oxygen atom
What are chemical formulas also known as?
Symbol equations
What does each state symbol stand for?
S: Solid, L: Liquid, G: Gas, AQ: Aqueous Solution
What do structural equations show?
The spatial structure of the molecules in either two or three dimensions
How do we visualise structural equations?
Using ball and stick models
What does the Law of Conservation of Matter say?
That during all chemical reactions the total number of atoms of each elements remains the same
How do we balance equations?
By placing whole numbers in front of chemical formulas
What are these whole numbers known as?
Coefficients, they tell you the relative amounts of the chemicals involved in the reaction
