According to the law of conservation of mass, mass cannot be gained or destroyed in a chemical reaction. Why can’t you simply add the masses of two reactants to determine the total mass of product?

The law of conservation of mass states that the total mass of reactants in a closed system remains constant throughout a chemical reaction and is equal to the total mass of the products. This means that mass is conserved and not created or destroyed during a chemical reaction.

In a chemical reaction, atoms of the reactants are rearranged to form products. While the total number of atoms remains the same, the way they are combined differs between the reactants and the products. A chemical reaction is a process in which bonds between atoms are broken and new ones are formed to create a new substance.

Since a chemical reaction involves the rearrangement of atoms, simply adding the masses of the reactants does not take into account how these atoms are combined in the products. In fact, it is crucial to balance the chemical equation to ensure the conservation of mass. In a balanced chemical equation, the number of atoms for each element on the reactant side must be equal to the corresponding number of atoms on the product side.

To determine the mass of the product, one must first balance the chemical equation and then apply the law of conservation of mass. This means that the total mass of the reactants must be equal to the total mass of the products, and the coefficients in the balanced equation can be used to calculate the mass by multiplying them by their respective molar masses. To sum up, simply adding the masses of the reactants is not sufficient to determine the mass of the products because it ignores the rearrangement of atoms and their respective bonding patterns in a chemical reaction. Instead, we need to balance the chemical equation and apply the law of conservation of mass to accurately determine the mass of the products.