A chemical reaction is said to have taken place when two or more molecules interact to form one or more new molecule/s. The interacting molecules are called reactants, while the new molecules are called the products. Chemical reactions involve chemical changes, which means the chemical composition of the reacting species change and the products have properties which are different from those of the reactants.
Chemical reactions can be represented by chemical equations using the chemical formula of various species involved. An example chemical reaction is the reaction involved in photosynthesis:
`6CO_2 + 6H_2O + sunlight -> C_6H_12O_6 + 6O_2`
Here, carbon dioxide (CO2) and water (H2O) are the reacting species and the products are glucose (C6H12O6) and oxygen (O2). The bonds of the reacting species were broken and new bonds were formed to produce the products in this reaction.
An important aspect of writing chemical equations for a reaction is balancing the equation, which means that the number of atoms of each species is the same on both the product and reactant side. Once that is done, we can use the well balanced reaction to solve numerical problems on the amount of product formed or reactant consumed.
Hope this helps.
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