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Ch.3 - Molecules, Compounds & Chemical Equations

Chapter 3, Problem 110

Write the balanced chemical equation for the reaction of aqueous potassium hydroxide with aqueous iron(III) chloride to form solid iron(III) hydroxide and aqueous potassium chloride.

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Hello, everyone. Today we have the following problem, provide a balanced equation for reacting to specified element and excess oxygen. So here we have a sodium reacting with oxygen. So to first write out our equation, we have a solid sodium reacting with oxygen gas. And to decide what this will form, we essentially make note that sodium being in group one A has a charge of positive one and oxygen being in group six A has a charge of minus two. And so when they react, we will have two sodium ions combining with one oxygen ion to balance the charges. So we essentially swap the charges and they act as subscripts. So we get that sodium and oxygen gas will form the following which is sodium oxide and this will be a solid. So to balance, we simply just say or we make note of how many of each element we have on either side of the reaction. Arrow on the left, we have one sodium and two oxygen. On the right, we have two sodium and one oxygen. So what can we do to make sure that we balance this equation? Well, we can first add a two to the right hand side. And this will give us four sodium instead of two and we will have two oxygen instead of one. Now, we need to balance a number of sodiums. If we multiply our coefficient by four, we get that there are four sodium. Looking at our answer choices, we see that ancho d best reflects this. And with that, we've answered the question overall, I hope this helped. And until next time.