Balancing Equations Worksheet | Chemical | Practice
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As a critical part of understanding chemistry, students must be able to balance chemical equations. Practice using balancing equation worksheets is an effective way to help students understand how to do so.
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Balancing equations is necessary in chemistry in order to know the ratio of substances that is present before and after a reaction. Knowing the ratio, in turn, will let you see how efficient the chemical process is. The law of conservation of mass dictates that matter (atoms) is not lost during a reaction, and so each side of the equation must retain the same mass. Understanding that the number of atoms does not change with a reaction allows for the quantitative study of the elements.
Balancing a chemical equation requires both sides of the equation to have the same number of atoms, although the reactants and products will differ.
Using Balancing Equations Worksheets
One common way to balance equations is with the help of a table that lets you see how many atoms are on each side. In this type of table, you would use one row for each element, and two columns, one for the reactant side and one for the product side. For example, in the equation H2O > H2 + O2 you would create a table with 2 hydrogen atoms in the top left cell, 2 hydrogen atoms in the top right cell, 1 oxygen atom in the bottom left cell, and 2 oxygen atoms in the bottom right cell.
You have to increase the oxygen to 2 atoms in the left column, so you can place a 2 X in front of the 1 in that column, but you have to multiply the 2 hydrogen atoms above by 2 as well. This leaves you with 4 total hydrogen atoms in the first column, so you will have to multiply the top right column by two as well, so that it equals 4 hydrogen atoms too.
Creating tables for each problem might be helpful for students to get a hang of balancing equations, or you could leave blank space to the right of the equation to let students write out their process.
A more popular type of worksheet just displays problems one by one, with space next to each compound for the student to write in the appropriate ratios, for example:
1. ___C3H5(NO3)3 —> ___CO2 + ___H2O + ___N2 + ___O2
2. ___CO2 + ___S8 —> ___CS2 + ___SO2
Using this format, you can easily make your own worksheet from scratch.
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