in news of school...

Whatever 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.

an upgoerfive text talking about my work

A couple things: this is definitely not the choice of limited vocabulary I'd probably go with myself for a project attempting to simplify verbage for understandability. But it's interesting to work within.

Also, I made an effort not to oversimplify my syntax which is something I've seen a lot of upgoerfive do -- it's a stylistic choice, maybe, but I think a lot of people are making it unconsciously. And I think it contributes to a sense of condescension, at least to native speakers; it feels like you're being talked to as a small child. Which, I'll be honest, I didn't like that much when I was a small child myself.

Additionally, I defined a few words that aren't in the editor; I didn't use them to further define any other words. I think it's valid because how else do you introduce anyone to expanded vocabulary? But YMMV on that one.

So all that said: ( an upgoerfive text talking about my work )

Permalink to the upgoerfive editor as proof it passes.