Reactants and Products

📚 Key Concepts

🔹 Real-Life Example

When you bake a cake, you mix flour, eggs, sugar, and baking powder (reactants) and put them in the oven. What comes out is a delicious cake (product) that tastes and looks completely different from the individual ingredients. The reactants have been transformed into a product through chemical reactions involving heat.

Reactants: The substances which take part in a chemical reaction are called reactants.

Products: The new substances produced as a result of chemical reaction are called products.

🧪 Important Formulas

🔸 General Representation

Reactants → Products

Example: Magnesium + Oxygen → Magnesium Oxide

In this reaction:

• Reactants: Magnesium and Oxygen (2 reactants)
• Product: Magnesium Oxide (1 product)

🔹 Understanding the Arrow

• Arrow (→): Shows the direction of reaction
• Left side (LHS): Reactants are written
• Right side (RHS): Products are written
• Plus sign (+): Separates multiple reactants or products

🔍 Advanced: Conservation Principle

During chemical reactions, atoms are neither created nor destroyed. They simply rearrange to form new compounds. This is why chemical equations must be balanced – the number of each type of atom must be equal on both sides.