Complete and balance the nuclear equations for the following fission reactions: (a) 23592U + 10n¡16062Sm + 7230Zn + _ 10n

Video transcript

Welcome back everyone in this example, we have the following fission reaction. What is the complete balanced equation? So what we have given from the prompt is to 35 palladium reacting with a neutron particle to produce Promethean 160 as our first product, Germanium 72 as our second product and an unknown number of neutron particles as our third product. So we need to solve for how many moles of neutron particles we have. So right now we're going to need to set up an expression for our knowns and unknowns and we want to recognize that because all of our atomic numbers which are represented here in the subscript on the left hand side of each of our atoms are filled in. We already have balanced atomic numbers, recall that atomic number is represented by the symbol Z. In our chemical symbol of an element. Whereas a would represent our mass number for our chemical element or chemical symbol. Sorry. So this is our mass number and based on our mass numbers, we have a mass number of one for this neutron. However, we're going to consider it unbalanced since we don't know the coefficient of this neutron. So we're going to need to solve in an expression for that coefficient. So, using all of our known mass numbers, we're going to solve for Willis this coefficient as X. So what we will have to sulfur X is on our known side, which is our react inside we have 2 35 as our mass number of palladium added to our mass number of our neutron on the reactant side being one set equal to our product side, where we have the mass number 1 60 for Prometheus Added to the mass number of Germanium being 72. And then added to our mass number of our neutron on our product side, which is equal to one times X. Which we need to solve for. So simplifying this, we would have to 36 sorry, this should be 2 36 equal to our right hand side of our equation. Where we would have the sum of 1 60 72 to give us 2 32 where we have X times one, which would result in plus X. Here and so simplifying this, we would say that X is equal to 2 36 minus 32. Which is going to give us an X value equal to four, meaning that that would be our coefficient we fill in our nuclear equation. And so to give our balanced nuclear equation we would have to 35 palladium with the atomic number 93 reacting with one or sorry with a neutron with the atomic number zero. And the mass number one to produce our product Prometheus um 60 with the atomic number 61 for Prometheus added to our second product germanium 72 with the atomic number and our 3rd final product would be our four neutrons are firm als of neutrons that have a mass number of one and an atomic number of zero. And this entire nuclear equation is going to be our final answer as our bounced nuclear equation. I hope everything I explained was clear. If you have any questions, please leave them down below and I will see everyone in the next practice video.