Conservation of mass and balancing equations

• In chemical equations the reactant are written on the left side and the products on the right side
• Chemical formulae are used to represent the substances in the reactants and the products.
• The law of conservation of mass states that no atoms are lost or gained during a chemical reaction
• When you represent chemical reactions by symbol equations there must be the same number of each type of atom on the both sides of the equation. This means that the equation must be balanced
• If the chemical container is open and gas is consumed or produced in a reaction, the mass appears to go up or down but in terms of the atoms taking part it really has not changed