CHEMISTRY COMMUNITY

how exactly do we balance the reactions? Is it the same as balancing regular reactions?

Are you asking about half reactions?

To balance redox reactions, you want to balance the electrons transferred in the reduction reaction and the oxidation reaction. To do so, you want to separate the whole reaction into two half reactions: the reduction reaction (gaining electrons) and the oxidation reaction (losing reaction) by writing down the charge of each element in the reaction to identify both half reactions. After doing so, you want to balance the atoms in each half reaction by simply adding coefficients like any other reaction balancing. If the electrons are not already balanced (equal electrons on the reactant and product side), then multiply the entire half reactions (not just the electrons) until the electrons are equal on both sides and add the two half reactions together to get the net redox reaction.

The big thing is the number of electrons on each side have to be the same, so multiply each half reaction by a number to get the same total electrons on each side. Other than that it's pretty much the same!

It's not quite the same. The first part is different. First, you want to make sure that the half reactions have balanced electrons and then once that is done, you can balance the rest of the reaction normally.

Jessica Castellanos wrote:To balance redox reactions, you want to balance the electrons transferred in the reduction reaction and the oxidation reaction. To do so, you want to separate the whole reaction into two half reactions: the reduction reaction (gaining electrons) and the oxidation reaction (losing reaction) by writing down the charge of each element in the reaction to identify both half reactions. After doing so, you want to balance the atoms in each half reaction by simply adding coefficients like any other reaction balancing. If the electrons are not already balanced (equal electrons on the reactant and product side), then multiply the entire half reactions (not just the electrons) until the electrons are equal on both sides and add the two half reactions together to get the net redox reaction.

How do you know which reactants/products are gaining electrons and which ones are losing them?

Hope Hyland 2D wrote:

Jessica Castellanos wrote:To balance redox reactions, you want to balance the electrons transferred in the reduction reaction and the oxidation reaction. To do so, you want to separate the whole reaction into two half reactions: the reduction reaction (gaining electrons) and the oxidation reaction (losing reaction) by writing down the charge of each element in the reaction to identify both half reactions. After doing so, you want to balance the atoms in each half reaction by simply adding coefficients like any other reaction balancing. If the electrons are not already balanced (equal electrons on the reactant and product side), then multiply the entire half reactions (not just the electrons) until the electrons are equal on both sides and add the two half reactions together to get the net redox reaction.

How do you know which reactants/products are gaining electrons and which ones are losing them?

When you figure out the charge of each element in the reaction, the element (not always the whole reactant/product) gaining electrons will have a more negative charge on the product side and the one losing electrons will have a more positive charge on the product side.

Balancing a redox reaction is a bit different than just comparing normal products and reactants. Here you must keep track of the electrons being transferred. You must balance the two half reactions (one for oxidation, one for reduction) in terms of the electrons as well as the other elements. Thus, this adds more complication, depending on the relative oxidation states and the ratio of electrons being transferred, as you want the various electrons to cancel.