00:01
So let's take a look at this chemical equation, where hydrogen gas and oxygen gas come together to make water.
00:07
What you're looking at here is an unbalanced equation, where the total number of atoms on the reactant side does not equal the total number of atoms on the right side.
00:17
That's a problem, because atoms are neither created nor destroyed.
00:22
So we need to make sure that the number of atoms equal are equal on both sides of our reaction.
00:29
So how do we do that? we do that by balancing them.
00:34
So basically all we need to do is just write a number on the right side or the left side of the compounds to make sure that they're equal.
00:45
So let's take a look at hydrogen gas.
00:48
There are two hydrogen atoms on the left side.
00:54
And there are two hydrogen atoms on the right side.
00:58
That checks out.
01:00
But then we look at oxygen, there are two oxygen atoms on the left side, but there is only one on the right side.
01:08
So what we do is we write two on the right side to say that there are two water molecules.
01:18
However, while that does make oxygen become two, while there are two oxygens now, but there are now four hydrogen atoms on the right...