in news of school...
Jan. 27th, 2013 04:13 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
trueloveWhatever I end up thinking of my chemistry teacher (dunno yet, we're not very far into the semester), his preferred method of balancing redox equations is goddamn beautiful and miraculous, because it doesn't involve oxidation numbers and it's fast. Seriously, horrifying and ugly redox equations, balanced in five minutes or less.
Functionally, it's the method described here, with a few tweaks/different order. The way my teacher taught it is, first thing you do after you've balanced your half-reactions except for the H and the O, is balance any charge with H+ (for acidic) or OH- (basic), then you balance the oxygen in the equation with H2O, and balance the hydrogen with H0. (H0 = H+ + e-.) Then you just make sure the H0s cancel out (they should be on opposite sides of the equation) by multiplying by whatever you need to for the LCD and then add the half reactions back together.
And seriously, it's like the idiot-proof method of balancing redox equations and redox is what kicked my damn ass last semester of Chemistry. I'm a convert, seriously.
Functionally, it's the method described here, with a few tweaks/different order. The way my teacher taught it is, first thing you do after you've balanced your half-reactions except for the H and the O, is balance any charge with H+ (for acidic) or OH- (basic), then you balance the oxygen in the equation with H2O, and balance the hydrogen with H0. (H0 = H+ + e-.) Then you just make sure the H0s cancel out (they should be on opposite sides of the equation) by multiplying by whatever you need to for the LCD and then add the half reactions back together.
And seriously, it's like the idiot-proof method of balancing redox equations and redox is what kicked my damn ass last semester of Chemistry. I'm a convert, seriously.