Determine the total sum of the coefficients after balancing th...

Question

Determine the total sum of the coefficients after balancing the following equation.

Chemical equation to balance for coefficients in chemistry course.

Accepted Answer

In this practice question, it says, determine the total sum of the coefficients after balancing the following equation. Alright. So this one's a little bit different from what we're accustomed to seeing. Here, they're basically asking us to find all the coefficients for each compound and then add them up together because we want the sum, the total sum of all the coefficients. Alright. So we're gonna start out with our list. We're gonna say we have carbon, hydrogen, sulfur, and oxygen. On the other side, the list matches carbon, hydrogen, sulfur, and oxygen. Now we're gonna say we have 2 carbons, 5+1, 6 hydrogens, 1 sulfur and 2 oxygens. On the other side, we have 1 carbon, 2 hydrogens, 1 sulfur, and then we have what? 2 oxygens, 3 oxygens, 5 oxygens, 5 oxygens here. Alright. So let's balance this out. The number of carbons don't match. Here we have a 2 and here we have a 1. So we're gonna place a coefficient of 2 right here. That 2 gets distributed to not only the carbon, but also the oxygen. So we're gonna have 2 carbons and then 2 times 2 is 4 oxygens, 5 oxygens, and then 7 oxygens. Next, balance out your hydrogens. Here this is 6, but here this is only, 2, so I'm going to put a 3 here. So 3 times 2 gives me 6 hydrogens, but then we have 3 oxygens here plus another 4 here, so that's 7, plus another 2 is 9 oxygens. Don't worry, we're just going down the list, we're gonna eventually get to the oxygens. Sulfurs are the same, both are 1 and 1, So let's not do anything to that. Then here we have 2 oxygens and here we have 9 oxygens. So we have to think of a number to multiply 4 by. It well, I kind of said it. We have to think of a number to multiply 2 by to get to, 9. We can't do 4 because 4 times 2 gives us 8. We can't do 5 because 5 times 2 gives us 10. The number that we have to place here is 4.5. 4.5 times 2 would give me 9. But remember, you're not allowed to have fractions or decimals as coefficients. They have to be whole numbers. In these situations, remember, all we do is we multiply this by 2. So all the coefficients will get multiplied by 2. So when we do that, we're gonna have 2, 9, 4, 6, and 2 as the coefficients for each one of these compounds. K. So then 902 gas gives me 4 c02gas6h2o liquid plus 2 s o two gas. So our coefficients would be 2, 9, 4, 6, and 2. This is in our final answer because, remember, we have to add them all up. We need the total sum of all the coefficients. So 2 +9 gives me 11, 11 +4 equals 15, plus 6 gives me 21, plus this final 2 gives me 23 as the total sum for all the coefficients in this balanced equation. So 23 would be our final answer.

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Determine the total sum of the coefficients after balancing the following equation.

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