CGTC FAQs: Academic Support

When you are balancing chemical equations you would write the equation. You would do this by writing the reactants first on the left side then writing the products on the right hand side of the equation. Once you have that done you would then count the number of atoms for each element on both sides of the equation. Next, you would place coefficients(multipliers) in front of the molecules to balance the atoms. After that the next thing you do is adjust the coefficients atoms last as they appear often in the multiple compounds. After you have done you can verify by recounting all the atoms on both sides to ensure the number of atoms of each element is equal.