Hello hello Melissa Maribel, here to help you understand
how to balance chemical equations.
Now if you're feeling like,
"balancing chemical equations? I can barely balance my life."
Now don't worry, I got you covered.
For balancing chemical equations you want to make
the reactants be the same exact number as your products.
Always start with balancing everything other
than hydrogen and oxygen.
Leave hydrogen and especially oxygen for the very end.
Alright, let's get started.
Here we have an unbalanced equation.
Our first step is to write all of our elements for our reactants
and all the elements that we have for our products
on either side, and I'm going to keep them in the exact same order
to make it easier to balance.
Now my tip for you,
is for any polyatomic atoms that are the same
on actually both sides like our OH and our OH here.
Do not separate them.
We're going to leave the OH's intact to make it a lot easier to balance everything out.
Alright so now let's get back to our reactants
and see how many of each reactants we have.
Looking at barium we only have 1.
Chlorine, this subscript tells us we have 2.
Na we only have 1.
OH has no subscript or parenthesis with the subscript.
So then we're just going to say that there's only one OH.
Now going to our products
we'll see that barium only has 1.
Now I'm gonna look at OH for right now and see that there's actually a 2 subscript
that 2 only affects the OH group, not barium.
So this is saying there are 2 OH's.
So 2 OH's.
And then we'll have 1 Na, or sodium.
And 1 Cl or 1 chlorine.
Now, the next step is to figure out, ok where are we going to start, what do we want to balance.
So we have to balance out our chlorine because there's
2 on this side and only 1 on the other.
And then for OH there's only 1 on our reactants side and 2 on our products.
Always begin with everything other than hydrogen and oxygen
So I'm actually going to start with the chlorine first.
So since there's a 2 here, I need two more on the product side.
So I'm going to place a 2 right in front of that compound.
Note that you cannot put the 2 in the center
because that's then breaking apart the compound all together.
And since this is a compound
this 2 will actually distribute and affect the
Na and the chlorine
So I'm actually going to recount everything now.
If we were to recount everything
we'll see that we have two Na's.
And now we have two chlorine.
But nothing changed with barium
or our OH, so we still have 2.
Now looking on the reactant's side
I'm gonna now continue to balance out the Na.
So we need 2 on our reactant side
this would then distribute to both again,
and we'll see that
this affects our Na because we now have
2 on that side and we have 2 OH's.
Everything else remains the same.
And we're balanced.
Here we have our next unbalanced equation.
Remember to start with writing all of the different
elements you have for your reactants side
and for your products keeping that in the exact same order
to help you balance it out
Now I'm always going to leave hydrogen for the second to last
and oxygen for the very last
It makes it so much easier,
oxygen tends to balance out at the very end.
Now looking at this
I'm just gonna count how many of each element we have.
So looking at this subscript,
we have 2 carbon on our reactant side
looking at the 4 subscript, we have four hydrogen
and 2 oxygen.
Now looking on our product's side we'll see there's only 1 carbon.
That 2 affects this oxygen, however
there's actually another oxygen here so don't forget about that.
There sometimes can be other oxygen in other compounds
and I'm gonna look at this and actually count it up.
So there's 2 plus that 1 oxygen making there be
3 oxygen on our product's side.
Next we only have 2 hydrogen due to this subscript.
And let's look and see and
really nothing is balanced whatsoever.
We have our work ahead of us.
So looking at carbon that's where I want to begin
because remember hydrogen is second to last then oxygen.
So carbon I can place a 2
right in front of that CO2 compound
and this affects our carbon and our oxygen
because it's like your distributing
and I say that because we're gonna multiply this 2
times this other 2 for our oxygen
and then recount everything.
So if I'm gonna recount and see what's
affected by this 2
there's actually 2 carbon on our product side
and 2 times 2 so 4.
4 plus this other 1 oxygen making it 5.
So we now have 5 oxygen on our product side
and nothing happened with hydrogen so that stayed
the exact same.
Now let's go back to our reactant's side.
And then we'll balance out our hydrogen
So we'll se there's only 4 on this side and we have
only 2 on our product side so
I need 2 more. Because you're looking at what will
multiply by this subscript to give us 4.
So 2 times 2 gives us 4.
I'm gonna recount everything again.
So this would've been 4 hydrogen and nothing else changed
except our oxygen did right so
because I'm gonna actually distribute that 2
our hydrogen changed and our oxygen.
Now we have 2 plus the 4 that was here
so we now have 6.
Almost done. Last thing is oxygen to balance out.
So what do we need to multiply oxygen by
to get 6?
So 3 times 2 will give us 6.
So I'll place a 3 in front of that O2
and recount everything on our reactant's side
and we'll see that 3 times that 2 gives us 6.
And right there we are balanced.
I did another video with more practice problems
of balancing chemical equations
make sure you check that out because guys
to really understand chemistry and to not have to take this class again
practice is truly the key
If there's a specific question that you have however
leave a comment below, let me know what you need help with
and reserve your spot today for the live tutoring sessions with myself
where you can ask me your questions
and we're gonna get into a lot of detail
in these topics overall
make sure you LIKE, subscribe, and I'll see you next time
