00:02
Okay, in this question we are asked to balance this chemical equation and what balancing means is that we need to add coefficients or in other words numbers in front of each term so that we end up with the same number of each type of atom on each side of the equation.
00:19
So starting off, let's look at carbon.
00:21
On the left, there are eight carbon.
00:24
On the right, there's only one.
00:26
So in order to get eight on the right, we need to add a coefficient of eight in front of co2.
00:33
That will give us eight carbon on the right.
00:36
Next, let's look at hydrogen.
00:38
There are 18 on the left and we have h2 on the right.
00:42
So we need to think about what number we can multiply times two to give us 18.
00:47
And that's right.
00:48
That number would be nine.
00:51
All right, so now we need to look at the oxygen.
00:54
On the left, we only have two oxygen.
00:57
On the right, we have eight times two, which is of course 16 plus nine more.
01:07
So 16 plus 9 gives us 25 oxygen.
01:16
Well on the right, since we have to whatever coefficient we put there has to be multiplied times two, we don't have a whole number we could put there.
01:25
What would work would be 25 halves, but coefficients cannot be fractions.
01:32
They have to be whole numbers.
01:33
We can't have half of an oxygen molecule.
01:37
But at this point, the equation is balanced.
01:39
So what we're going to do is borrow a technique from math class that says in order to get rid of a fraction, we multiply by the denominator...