PhET Teacher Activities: Balancing Chemical Equations

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published by the PhET
written by Jackie Esler

This set of middle school instructional materials was developed specifically for use with the PhET simulation "Balancing Chemical Equations". It includes pre-lab assessment, complete lesson plan, student guide, teaching tips, homework, and extension activities. All documents are freely downloadable in doc or pdf formats.

See Related Materials for a link to the simulation "Balancing Chemical Equations", which must be open to perform this activity.

Please note that this resource requires Java Applet Plug-in.

https://phet.colorado.edu/en/activities/3441

Subjects	Levels	Resource Types
Education Practices - Active Learning = Modeling Modern Physics - Atomic Physics Other Sciences - Chemistry	- Middle School	- Instructional Material = Activity = Interactive Simulation = Lesson/Lesson Plan = Problem/Problem Set = Student Guide

Intended Users	Formats	Ratings
- Educators	- text/html - application/java - application/pdf	Currently 0.0/5 Want to rate this material? Login here!

Access Rights:: Free access
Restriction:: © 2011 University of Colorado at Boulder
Additional information is available.
Keywords:: atom, atomic mass, chemical equation, chemical equation game, chemical reaction, compound, elements, molecule, product, reactant
Record Cloner:: Metadata instance created August 15, 2011 by Caroline Hall
Record Updated:: February 22, 2025 by Lyle Barbato
Last Update when Cataloged:: June 2, 2011
Other Collections:: The Physics Front

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AAAS Benchmark Alignments (2008 Version)

4. The Physical Setting

4D. The Structure of Matter

6-8: 4D/M7a. No matter how substances within a closed system interact with one another, or how they combine or break apart, the total mass of the system remains the same.
6-8: 4D/M7b. The idea of atoms explains the conservation of matter: If the number of atoms stays the same no matter how the same atoms are rearranged, then their total mass stays the same.
6-8: 4D/M11. Substances react chemically in characteristic ways with other substances to form new substances with different characteristic properties.
6-8: 4D/M12. If samples of both the original substances and the final substances involved in a chemical reaction are broken down, they are found to be made up of the same set of elements.
6-8: 4D/M13. The idea of atoms explains chemical reactions: When substances interact to form new substances, the atoms that make up the molecules of the original substances combine in new ways.

11. Common Themes

11B. Models

6-8: 11B/M1. Models are often used to think about processes that happen too slowly, too quickly, or on too small a scale to observe directly. They are also used for processes that are too vast, too complex, or too dangerous to study.

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Record Link

<a href="https://www.compadre.org/portal/items/detail.cfm?ID=11392">Esler, Jackie. PhET Teacher Activities: Balancing Chemical Equations. Boulder: PhET, June 2, 2011.</a>

AIP Format

J. Esler, (PhET, Boulder, 2011), WWW Document, (https://phet.colorado.edu/en/activities/3441).

AJP/PRST-PER

J. Esler, PhET Teacher Activities: Balancing Chemical Equations (PhET, Boulder, 2011), <https://phet.colorado.edu/en/activities/3441>.

APA Format

Esler, J. (2011, June 2). PhET Teacher Activities: Balancing Chemical Equations. Retrieved May 2, 2025, from PhET: https://phet.colorado.edu/en/activities/3441

Chicago Format

Esler, Jackie. PhET Teacher Activities: Balancing Chemical Equations. Boulder: PhET, June 2, 2011. https://phet.colorado.edu/en/activities/3441 (accessed 2 May 2025).

MLA Format

Esler, Jackie. PhET Teacher Activities: Balancing Chemical Equations. Boulder: PhET, 2011. 2 June 2011. 2 May 2025 <https://phet.colorado.edu/en/activities/3441>.

BibTeX Export Format

@misc{ Author = "Jackie Esler", Title = {PhET Teacher Activities: Balancing Chemical Equations}, Publisher = {PhET}, Volume = {2025}, Number = {2 May 2025}, Month = {June 2, 2011}, Year = {2011} }

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%A Jackie Esler %T PhET Teacher Activities: Balancing Chemical Equations %D June 2, 2011 %I PhET %C Boulder %U https://phet.colorado.edu/en/activities/3441 %O text/html

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%0 Electronic Source %A Esler, Jackie %D June 2, 2011 %T PhET Teacher Activities: Balancing Chemical Equations %I PhET %V 2025 %N 2 May 2025 %8 June 2, 2011 %9 text/html %U https://phet.colorado.edu/en/activities/3441

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