Art, Music, and Creative Writing homework help

Art, Music, and Creative Writing homework help. Balance the equation for the combustion of heptane: C?H?? + O? ? CO? + H?O.
Start with the unbalanced equation:
C?H?? + O? ? CO? + H?O
A method that often works is to balance everything other than O and H first, then balance O, and finally balance H.
Another useful procedure is to start with what looks like the most complicated formula.
The most complicated formula looks like C?H??. We put a 1 in front of it to remind ourselves that the coefficient is now fixed.
We start with
1 C?H?? + O? ? CO? + H?O
Balance C:
We have fixed 7 C atoms on the left hand side, so we need 7 C atoms on the right hand side. We put a 7 in front of the CO?.
1 C?H?? + O? ? 7 CO? + H?O
Balance O:
We can’t balance O yet, because we have two formulas that contain O and lack coefficients. So we balance H instead.
Balance H:
We have fixed 16 H atoms on the left hand side, so we need 16 H atoms on the right hand side. We put an 8 in front of the H?O.
Now we can balance O:
We have fixed 22 O atoms on the right hand side: 14 from the CO? and 8 from the H?O. We put an 11 in front of the O?.
1 C?H?? + 11 O? ? 7 CO? + 8 H?O
Every formula now has a fixed coefficient. We should have a balanced equation.
Let?s check:
Left hand side: 7 C, 16 H, 22 O
Right hand side: 7 C, 22 O, 16 H
All atoms balance. The balanced equation is
C?H?? + 11O? ? 7CO? + 8H?O
Hope this helps.

Art, Music, and Creative Writing homework help