Question

What is a balanced chemical equation? Why should chemical equations be balanced?

Answer 1

A balanced chemical reaction is an equation that has equal numbers of each type of atom on both sides of the arrow.

A chemical equation is a written symbolic representation of a chemical reaction. The reactant chemical(s) are given on the left-hand side and the product chemical(s) on the right-hand side.

The law of conservation of mass states that atoms can neither be created nor destroyed in a chemical reaction, so the number of atoms that are present in the reactants has to balance the number of atoms that are present in the products.