Basics of chemical reactions

Chemistry is a subject that requires a lot of daily practice. It would be best if we study and practice it daily.

For today, I would be explaining about chemical reactions in this blog post.

In our daily lives we come across many changes which may be physical and chemical. A physical change can be reversible. The process of freezing of water, melting of wax and evaporation are a few examples of physical changes.

A chemical change is irreversible. For example, Digestion of food, rusting of iron and the process of milk turning into curd. There are many ways to identify a chemical reaction. We would not be able to check if any acid reacted with food by dipping our finger into it.

Therefore, to check if any substance has undergone chemical reactions we need to check for these characteristics.

Identification of chemical reactions:

1. Change in state

2. Change in colour

3. Evolution of gas

4. Change in temperature

5. Evolution of a precipitate

A chemical reaction can be written in the form of words or chemical symbols. An unbalanced chemical equation is called a skeletal equation. Whenever we write a chemical equation, the total number of atoms on the left-hand side of the equation should be equal to the number of atoms on the right-hand side of the equation.

According to the law of conservation of mass by Antoine Lavoisier :  Mass can neither be created nor destroyed during a chemical reaction.

Therefore, the number of atoms of each element remains the same before and after the chemical reaction.