My nephew loves asking me science things, mostly because I always find a fun analogy to explain. Today I was explaining from where comes the gas of soda and I bumped with the concept of chemical equilibrium and he asked about that. Now I’m trying to find a creative analogy to explain chemical equilibrium to him the next time we meet.
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Chemical equilibrium happens when there’s no *net* change in a chemical reaction. Certain reactions like to happen, and they produce the products. When it’s the reaction you want to happen, this is called the “forwards” direction. Reactions, especially simple ones, will also happen in the reverse direction. At a certain ratio, the forwards reaction happens at the same rate as the reverse reaction. This is equilibrium.
A good example is dissolving a bunch of salt in water. The salt dissolving is the forwards direction. The salt falling out of solution is the backwards reaction. Which individual salt atoms are dissolved at any given time changes, but once at equilibrium, the solution will have a constant amount of salt dissolved and a constant amount sitting on the bottom
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