Conservation of Mass and Balancing Equations

• The atoms and molecules that interact with each other are called reactants.

• The atoms and molecules that are produced are called products.

• In a chemical reaction, the bonds are broken and the atoms and molecules are rearranged.

• No new atoms are created. No atoms are destroyed.

• They are simply rearranged.

A chemical equation is a combination of chemical symbols and formulas that explain what happened during a chemical reaction.

Reactants - these are the elements that are interacting. In this experiment, the reactants would be baking soda and vinegar.

Products - this is what is produced. In this experiment, sodium acetate, water, and carbon dioxide are produced.

For an equation to be balanced, there needs to be the same number of atoms on both sides of the equation.

We can ONLY ADD using coefficients.