Nerdy Science Blog

Stumbled this Chemical Equation Balancer and I thought it will eases chemistry students’ life. But…

2H₂ + O₂ –> 2H₂O

That is the simplest and yet the balancer can’t do it. It can only do those equations given in the examples.

H₂O is the water equation (just in case you don’t know). Some of you might wonder why the chemical equation to form a water molecule is 2H₂ + O₂ –> 2H₂O.

The fact is, in nature, both hydrogen (H) and oxygen (O) exist in diatomic molecules, which also means each hydrogen molecule is consisted of 2 hydrogen atoms. In order to form water,

H₂ + O₂ –> H₂O

However, you can see that the above equation is not balance. The sum of H₂ and O₂ should be H₂O₂, but we want H₂O. We need to do some simple maths to balance the equation. All we need to do is adding a 2 in front of H₂ and a 2 in front of H₂O.

2H₂ + O₂ –> 2H₂O

The 2 in front of the 2H₂ means there are 2 hydrogen molecules ( H_{2 +}H₂　).  So,

H₂ + H₂ + O₂ –> H₂O + H₂O

2H₂ + O₂ –> 2H₂O

LiveScience:

1. The Hydrogen Economy
2. Therapeutic Cloning
3. Moore’s Law Upheld
4. Desktop 3-D Printing
5. Location-Based Computing
6. Better, Cheaper Solar Cells
7. Mobile Robots
8. Pervasive Wireless Internet
9. Gene Therapy and/or Stem Cells
10. Digital Libraries

When I saw “The Hydrogen Economy”, suddenly the images of water coming into my mind. I’m Asian, and water is the science of Asian mothers. I had been living with an Asian woman for 18 years, and have contacts with a lot of Asian women in my life. I am fully aware of their science of water. Water is a philosopher’s stone to them. If you have any sickness, that’s because you don’t drink enough water. Drink more water to heal your illness. That’s why energized, ionized, powerized, tigerized, motorized, goddized, smartized water can really sells in Asian market.

By the way, water is not everything in this Hydrogen Economy.

This is funny, people don’t care what dihydrogen monoxide is, they just do what others told them.