BTEC Science Additional Resource:
Symbol and word equations
A chemical reaction can be represented as either a word or a symbol
equation.
Chemicals have names which represent the elements in them.
On the other side of the sheet are 5 chemical reactions represented as
both a word and symbol equation.
Use a periodic tables for this.
1) Look at the word equations, try to identify as many of the elements
as you can from the names of the chemicals.
2) Look at the symbol equations, using the periodic table identify what
the atoms in each chemical are.
3) Try to match up the word equation with the symbol equation.
4) Balance the symbol equations
(Put numbers before each of the chemical formulae so that the number
of atoms are the same on both sides of the equation)
Word equation
Symbol equations
Word
equation
Symbol
equation
A
B
C
D
E
F