Question

Intro to equilibrium tutorial

Answer 1

What is equilibrium?

When we have a state where our forward and reverse reactions are happening at the same RATE, then we can say that our reaction has reached an equilibrium.

A common example is a bridge and there are two sides to this bride. One side we label the reactants while the other we name products.say the bridge is two ways and we have cars going both ways. well, lets say we have 8 cars going one way, and 8 going the other and this stays constant. then we say that this is equilibrium has been reached. there could be any number of cars on both sides; the number could be equal; there may be more on one side than another side; we cannot specify this directly (will be explained later).




TIP: The reversible arrows in your reaction, mean your reaction can go both ways reactants to products and products to reactants.



What it doesn’t mean

it doesn’t necessarily mean that the concentrations of the reactants and products are equal; it just means that our forward and reverse reactions are happening at the same rate.

What we can do:

We can figure out what the ratio of concentrations reactants and products are at equilibrium, and we introduce a concept called Keq to explain this.