The reaction of aqueous zinc chloride and aqueous sodium oxalate is represented by the balanced ionic equation.
Zn2+(aq) + 2Cl-(aq) + 2Na+(aq) + C2O42-(aq) → ZnC2O4(s) + 2Na+(aq) + 2Cl-(aq)
Give the balanced net ionic equation for the reaction. Include the states.
Well, it looks like the sodium ions and chloride ions are just hanging out together on both sides of the equation, so they're not really doing anything exciting. The real star of the show here is the zinc cation and the oxalate anion. They come together to form solid zinc oxalate. So, we can simplify the equation to:
Zn2+(aq) + C2O42-(aq) → ZnC2O4(s)
That's the net ionic equation. The sodium and chloride ions are just the "extras" in this reaction. They're like the background dancers who don't really contribute much to the main act.
To determine the balanced net ionic equation for the reaction, we need to remove any spectator ions that do not participate in the overall reaction. The spectator ions are those ions that remain unchanged on both sides of the equation.
In this case, the spectator ions are the 2Na+(aq) and 2Cl-(aq) ions, which appear on both the reactant and product sides of the equation. We can remove them to simplify the equation.
The balanced net ionic equation for the reaction is:
Zn2+(aq) + C2O42-(aq) → ZnC2O4(s)
In this equation, only the reacting ions are included, and the state of each species is indicated (aq represents aqueous and s represents solid).
I hope this explanation helps you understand how to derive the balanced net ionic equation for a reaction by removing spectator ions.