never got my head around balancing equations:mad:.

 

is this right to start?

 

Mg + HCl --> MgCl2 + H2

 

then attempt at balancing...

 

Mg + 2HCl --> MgCl2 + H2

Ya

BTW if you know Oxidation nos. then its a hell lot easy job !

well to put it simply, you need to look at the group each chemical is in. This will tell you (for lighter elements) how many gaps there are in the outer shell.

 

So eg. We look at Magnesium oxide. We know that Magnesium has 2 spare electrons (in group 2) and we want to make 8 electrons. If Oxygen has 6, then we use the one atom of oxygen

 

eg. Sodium. This has one spare electron, and There is 2 in oxygen, so to make it more stable we need another electron. We can use the 1 electron in hydrodgen to make NaOH