Science X | CHEMICAL EQUATIONS


CHEMICAL EQUATIONS

Activity 1.1 can be described as – when a magnesium ribbon is burnt in oxygen, it gets converted to magnesium oxide. This description of a chemical reaction in a sentence form is quite long. It can be written in a shorter form. The simplest way to do this is to write it in the form of a word-equation.

The word-equation for the above reaction would be –

Equation 1.1

The substances that undergo chemical change in the reaction (1. 1), magnesium and oxygen, are the reactants. The new substance, magnesium oxide, formed during the reaction, is the product.

A word-equation shows change of reactants to products through an arrow placed between them. The reactants are written on the left-hand side (LHS) with a plus sign (+) between them. Similarly, products are written on the right-hand side (RHS) with a plus sign (+) between them. The arrowhead points towards the products, and shows the direction of the reaction.