Equation Writing

E=MC^2? No, not that! Equation writing as in balancing chemical equations, etc, like balancing a scale. If you have 10 oxygen atoms on one side, you gotta balance it by putting another 10 oxygen atoms on the other side of the scale. The hard bit is, the different atoms can move around and form compounds or break down, into all states of matter - solid, liquid and gas.
My Reflection
Initially, it was a headache - I took really long to do just one question, it was so confusing, because the atoms can bond to form other compounds, and then to balance the equation, you had to work through quite a lot of steps of making sure each atom is balanced, a very messy and sometimes confusing process. The most interesting equation in my opinion are those involving ammonia and ammonium. At the begining, I thought both of them are the same, like sulphur and sulfer. However, when I started doing the equation writing practices on ammonia and ammonium, I realised that something was wrong - the equation just could not balance somehow. I was frustrated at being beaten by the little text on the paper, they seemed to be humiliating me. I started having the feeling that ammonia and ammonium were different after all. So, I went online and did some research, and BAM! It was true, ammonia is NH3 and ammonium was NH4. So, with this solved, there were still A LOT of practices to go. Next, another fun compound was CH3COOH. I found it very very irritating, why can't it be simplified into C2H4O2? I did some research again, and again, it was quite interesting. Vinegar is known as CH3COOH and not C2H4O2, because C2H4O2 can actually refer to many other different compounds - (1) O=CH-CH2-OH, (2) HO-CH=CH-OH, (3) CH3-O-CH=O, (4) CH3-COOH. Secondly, C2H4O2 only represent the molar amounts of the elements C, H, and O, which loses out to CH3COOH, because the latter also represent how the atoms are connected. Quite interesting, isn't it? That's what I feel too.