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Balancing Chemical Equations With Linear Algebra: Admin Leave A Comment Go To Comments

This document discusses balancing a chemical equation using linear algebra. It provides an example of an unbalanced chemical equation and uses a linear algebra approach to assign variables to the unknown coefficients and set up a system of equations to solve for the coefficients. The system is set up as a matrix and Gauss-Jordan elimination is used to solve for the values of the variables. Plugging these values back into the original equation results in a balanced chemical equation.

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Evon Lim
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100 views2 pages

Balancing Chemical Equations With Linear Algebra: Admin Leave A Comment Go To Comments

This document discusses balancing a chemical equation using linear algebra. It provides an example of an unbalanced chemical equation and uses a linear algebra approach to assign variables to the unknown coefficients and set up a system of equations to solve for the coefficients. The system is set up as a matrix and Gauss-Jordan elimination is used to solve for the values of the variables. Plugging these values back into the original equation results in a balanced chemical equation.

Uploaded by

Evon Lim
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© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Balancing Chemical Equations With Linear Algebra

Posted by admin on May 1, 2011Leave a comment (0)Go to comments

Not too long ago I was having a conversation with my fiances brother, a PHD chemist at
the University of Rochester. During the course of our conversation we got onto the topic
of balaning chemical equations and I recalled an elegant method that I learned in a linear
algebra class. Not only is this useful to balance simply equations but it can be used on
more complex equations too.
The equation I have chosen for this example came from an article on Balancing Chemical
Equations by Dr. Anne Marie Helmenstine. The purpose of choosing Dr. Helmenstines
example is to show that two different people using two different methods will achieve at
the same solution.
The complete text of the article can be found here at chemistry.about.com.
The Problem
By examination we can see that the following equation is not balanced.

The Solution
We first assign variables to each of the unknown coefficients in the equation which gives
us:

We set the reactants and products equal to each other since we are trying to balance this
chemical equation. By comparing the numbers of atoms in the reactants and products,
the following linear equations are obtained.
Carbon:

w=y

There is 1 carbon atom in the w term and 1 in the y term.

Hydrogen:

4w = 2z

There are 4 Hydrogen atoms in the w term and 2 in the z term.

Oxygen:

2x = 2y +
z

There are 2 oxygen atoms in the x term, 2 in the y term, and 1 in the z term.

Rewrite the linear equations in standard form to get a homogeneous system of equations
with 4 variables.
w

-y

4w
2x

-2y

=0
-2z

=0

-z

=0

Create a matrix for the above systems of equations augmented with zeros (left) and
perform the Gauss-Jordan elimination method to reduce the matrix(right).

This gives us the following values for our variables.


w = 1/2z
x = 1z
y = 1/2z
To calculate the smallest possible positive integer value of z, we have to find the least
common denominator of w, x and y which in this case is 2. If we work out the above
equations we calculate the values of our 4 variables to be:
w=1
x=2
y=1
z=2
Replace these values as the coefficients to our original equation. I have purposely left our
the w and y coefficients since any value multiplied by 1 equals itself.

The equation is now balanced. Although this method may not be necessary for an
equation this simple, it will quickly prove to be beneficial with more complex equations.

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