INTRODUCTION TO CHEMICAL REACTION

Chemical reactions is all we are surrounded with!!!

So, we must know what are these chemical reactions, Chemical reactions can simply be defined as a method or procedure in which chemical change take place and some new products are formed with certain new properties. In this process, old chemical bonds are broken down into fragments and then new bonds between rearranged atoms of the new formed product are formed.

So, what is reactant and product?

The substance or the thing which is showing a active participation in a chemical reaction is often called as "reactants".

And the new things formed as a result of chemical reaction are known as "products".

So, what happens is the reactants are transformed into products. Lets understand this with an example, When magnesium is heated it gives out white flames and forms magnesium oxide. So, what happens is when magnesium is heated it reacts with oxygen in the air and hence it forms magnesium oxide. Shown as,

Magnesium  +   Oxygen       _{^{____Heat________}>}     Magnesium oxide   

(As ribbon)      (from air)                               (white powder)

So this a example of a chemical reaction, with two reactants and one product. Its not that we can only conduct the reactions in labs only we can found them in our environment too as it is a simultaneous thing going in the daily life like cooking of food, formation of curd, respiration, candle wax burning etc there are lot many. Few of the common characteristics of chemical reactions are: Gas evolution, precipitate formation, color changing, temperature changing and state will also change. We can perform many experiments to observe these characteristics of chemical reaction.

Chemical equation: when we represent a reaction by using the symbols of the elemnts is called chemical equation.

Zn + H₂So₄    ___________> ZnSO₄ + H₂

where Zn, H, SO₄  are the symbols for the elements Zinc, Hydrogen and Sulphuric acid.