how do you do chemical equations? How do you know which elements join together and which ones don’t?
In: 3
The process is called stoichiometry.
Basically, elements are made of known, equal, numbers of protons and electrons, equal to their atomic number. The protons stay in the center of the atom while electrons form into regular groups called shells, like satellites in orbit. A shell can only contain a maximum number of electrons before their mutual magnetic repulsion forces new ones farther out. An atom “wants”, risking the anthropomorphization here, it’s outermost shell to be full.
To accomplish this, it will either “share” electrons with nearby atoms. This in effect increases the electron count in both atom’s outer shell. This is what is called a covalent bond.
By knowing how an atom’s atomic number, and how many electrons fit into each shell, we can do some quick math to figure out how simple chemicals will form.
Example H2O: water
(H)ydrogen has one electron
(O)xygen has 8
The first shell can contain a maximum of two electrons
The second shell can contain eight.
So each hydrogen forms one bond with the oxygen; effectively bringing the hydrogens up to two electrons, one full shell, and the Oxygen up to 10 electrons, which is two full shells.
Electrons, electrons, electrons. Chemistry as a whole can basically be explained as the study of electron behavior.
Atoms want a specific number of electrons in each energy level. Finding this number is easy, it’s just the number of the energy level squared, multiplied by 2. So the first energy level can hold 2 electrons, the second can hold 8, and so on.
In general, atoms with too many electrons will either give them up or share them with other atoms that have too few. So by counting the valence electrons (the electrons in the outermost energy level) of each element, you can predict how that element will interact with other elements.
Full disclosure, I am not a chemist and the process gets much, much more complicated when dealing with interactions between larger molecules, but that’s basically the gist of it.
ELI5? Hmm… tough one. I’ll give it a shot.
All the elements have been measured to precision. But some of them don’t equal a simple 1,2,3… answer. Some have a little extra leftover, or come up a little short, a little less than one, or a little more than one. Same with the twos and threes and so on…
So you have a broken a ruler into many little pieces, and it magically puts itself back together. The pieces the are a little short of 1, connect with those pieces that have a little more than 1. And so on… and then you get your ruler back.
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