Question

Balance each of these reactions and indicate the type of reaction each equation represents:d) Hg + O2 → HgO

Answer 1

Firstly, to balance the equation, we need to make sure each atom appears the same number of times in each side.

As we can see, the Hg appears balanced, because there are one on each side, but O is not, because we have two on the left side and one on the right side.

So, adding the coefficient to HgO will get:

`Hg+O_2\to2HgO`

However, now we have 1 Hg on the left side and 2 on the right side, so we need to add a coefficient to Hg too to get the balanced equation:

`2Hg+O_2\to2HgO`

This reaction can be classified as two types: Firstly , we can see that we have two compounds on the left side and on on the right side, so this is synthesis reaction, but since the redox number of the compounds also change, this can be classified as a redox reaction.