Question

What are the techniques used to make a balanced chemical reaction even more informative? Discuss with examples.

Answer 1

Chemical equation

1. A symbolic representation of a chemical reaction is a chemical equation.
2. It mainly comprises reactants and the products which are expressed in the form of chemical formulae.
3. A balanced chemical equation is where the total mass of the reactant is equal to the total mass of the product and this can be done by adding the coefficients to the reactant and the product.
4. To make a balanced chemical equation more informative one could add,

Symbols:

Symbol	Meaning
$\to$	Net forward reaction
$\rightleftharpoons$	Reversible reaction

Physical states:

Physical state	Meaning
(s)	solid
(l)	liquid
(g)	gas
(aq)	aqueous

Energy representation:

Symbols	Meaning
$∆$	input of energy
hv	energy of photons

Some more symbols like

$\downarrow$ used to show precipitation

$\uparrow$ used to show the evolution of gases.