Celebrating the 70s - 50th Celebration of Chem 13 News
Many students have difficulty in dealing with diatomic oxygen molecules when balancing equations in that they do not distinguish them from oxygen atoms. Comparing an oxygen molecule to a packaged pair of cupcakes has been useful in pointing out the need for doubling the other coefficients in the equation when one can’t buy “half a package”. Obviously this will work for any diatomic molecule, and similar analogies can be made for polyatomics such as P4 and S8.
Reprint September 1978
