Using the activity series (Table 4.5), write balanced chemical
e...

Question

Using the activity series (Table 4.5), write balanced chemical 
equations for the following reactions. If no reaction occurs, 
write NR. (e) aluminum metal is added to a solution of 
cobalt(II) sulfate.

Accepted Answer

Hi everyone for this problem. We're told to provide a balanced reaction equation. When a piece of aluminum metal is submerged in a copper to chloride solution and we're told to refer to the activity series. Okay, So in terms of the reactivity series, we're going to look for the position of aluminum metal and the position of copper. Okay. And so in order of highest to lowest oxidation or reactivity to oxidation, we see that aluminum falls above copper and that means that aluminum is going to be more reactive to oxidation. And when aluminum undergoes oxidation, it becomes AL three plus. Okay, so our aluminum metal oxidizes to a L three plus and our copper is just going to be our copper to chloride. Okay, so let's go ahead and write out our reaction. So and it's asking for it to be balanced. Okay, so we have our aluminum plus our copper to chloride is going to yield this is going to be a single replacement reaction. So it's going to yield Yeah, cl three plus solid copper. Okay, so let me add some spaces in between because we need to make sure that it is balanced. Okay, so this is our reaction. And so let's just make sure we have everything balanced here. So on the left side we have two chlorine is and on the right side we have three chlorine. So these numbers need to match. And so let's go ahead and add a three here. And when we do that, that gives us six chlorine And we'll add a two here. And when we do that, that gives us six chorines. Okay? by adding a three in front of our copper chloride, that gives us three coppers. So that means we need to add a three here. So now we have three coppers on the left and three coppers on the right for our aluminum. We added a two in front of aluminum chloride. So that made us have six. That makes us have to aluminum's on the right. And so we need two aluminums here. So we have two aluminums on the left and two aluminums on the right. So now this is our balanced reaction equation. Okay, and that is our final answer. I hope this was helpful.

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