What is meant by a Chemical Equilibrium?

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What is meant by a Chemical Equilibrium?

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Some chemical reactions go to (almost) completion; in other words everything you start with (your reactants) turn into something else (your products). Others don’t and instead give you a mixture of reactants and products because the products are able to react with each other and turn back into reactants. This results in an equilibrium.

It’s often called a Dynamic Equilibrium because the forward (reactants to products) and reverse (products to reactants) reactions are occurring at the same time so if you were able to see the individual molecules you would see a constant conversion between reactants and products. At equilibrium the reaction rates (how quickly they’re taking place) have become the same so, over time, there is no change in the amounts of each type of molecule in the mixture.

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