C2H6 + O2 ——-> CO2 + H2O
What is the coefficient of O2 when the above chemical equation is balanced with the smallest integers?
A) 3 B)4 C)7/2 D)7 E)9
Solution;
Chemical equations are balanced according to the principle of “Conservation of atomic number and type”.
In the equation, we take the floor number of the substance, which is crowded in terms of the number of atoms, as 1, and first we balance the atomic numbers in this substance. We usually look at the latest oxygen count.
The equation is balanced as
1C2H6 + 7/2 O2 ——-> 2 CO2 + 3 H2O.
However, the question asks what is the coefficient of O2 when it is balanced with the smallest integers. In other words, he wants all the coefficients in the reaction to be integers. (In other words, he does not want rational numbers in the coefficients.) Then we save the fraction by multiplying the denominator of the fractional number in the reaction with the coefficients of the whole equation.
We multiply the coefficients for this reaction by 2;
2C2H6 + 7 O2 ——-> 4 CO2 + 6 H2O
The answer is D.