AUTOMATIC ' BALANCING ' OF CHEMICAL EQUATIONS

摘要

A computer program conceived as an aid to chemistry students is presented for the calculation of the stoichiometric coefficients of chemical equations. Once these coefficients are calculated, the entire corresponding chemical equation with the respective coefficients is shown on the screen. The program is run from an "Options Menu", so the user does not have to learn commands. To compute the stoichiometric coefficients of a given chemical equation, the user must enter, in the same order that he or she would usually do on paper with a pencil or pen all the chemical species involved in an equation. Then, the calculations to compute the coefficients are carried out and the solution is shown. The program accepts and solves problems with ion species. Among other questions, the program checks that formulation rules are not broken and that chemical elements, formulae and characters such as parentheses and subscripts are properly entered. Chemical formulae can be represented by means of special graphic characters or by means of normal text characters.