Hey, everyone. So here it says, complete and balance the following reaction. Here we have potassium solid reacting with liquid water. So we have an alkaline metal reacting with water. We know that one of the products formed would be hydrogen gas.
So we have H2 gas and then we create a metal hydroxide. Potassium is in Group 1A so it's +1. Hydroxide ion is -1. When they combine, we get KOH aqueous. So we have our reaction, but now we have to remember to balance it.
We're going to say here, on this side, we have K, H, and O. Now on this side, K, H, and O. We have 1 potassium, 2 hydrogens, 1 oxygen. Here, we have 2 hydrogens, oh actually, 3 hydrogens, 1 potassium, 1 oxygen. Gotta balance this out. So here, these numbers are not the same.
One is 2 and one is 3, but they're in different locations. So it becomes hard to determine exactly how we would balance this out. So what I'm going to do here is I'm going to throw a 2 here. That 2 gets distributed to the potassium to give us 2, to give us 2 oxygens, then we have 2 hydrogens here and 2 here so that's 4. Let's go to the other side.
So if we go on the other side, I could throw a 2 here. That'll give me 4 and 2. Cool. And then I will throw a 2 here. So now both of our lists are the same.
We have 2, 4, and 2 in relation to potassium, hydrogen, and oxygen. And so this will represent our complete reaction as well as a balanced reaction. Alright. So this would be our final answer.
