Balancing Chemical Equations

Vera12

I'm trying to help a friend pass his chemistry class at the local community college. However, his teacher doesn't want to teach and has literally told people they were stupid, out loud and in class, because they didn't understand his explanations. We're trying to balance equations and enter them into a homework site. We think we have the equation balanced but it tells us we need to "Check that you have properly identified all of the phases in your answer." We don't know what this means and although the equation seems balanced it keeps coming back as incorrect. I'm at my wit's end here and so is he. I don't know how to type subscripts so here it is with large numbers.
Here is an example equation.
K3PO4+Ni(NO3)2→KNO3+Ni3(PO4)2

We think the answer should be
2K3PO4+3Ni(NO3)2→6KNO3+Ni3(PO4)2

If this is wrong can someone please explain why. I feel like an idiot, but I don't remember it being this hard in high school. Thanks

Julius

Yeah that looks right. Maybe you need to give the physical state of the chemicals too?

LostNinja

Julius wrote: »

Yeah that looks right. Maybe you need to give the physical state of the chemicals too?

This

he said that you need to "check that you have identified all phases in your answer" so you need to add the (l),(s), and (g) where needed.

Irredeemably Indecisive

Is this site/program Aleks? I fucking hated that site and failed (well, dropped out of) first semester chemistry because of it. Wouldn't accept correct answers (showing this in front of the teacher) and only accepting 2 chances at a problem just about destroyed my laptop in fits of rage every time I had load that site. She refused to accept written answers turned in, and even did one test on the program. Every time I used it I felt like I was hunting through a couple hundred lines of code to find a missing semi-colon. This was also about 4 years ago so I would hope they've improved it by now

So yeah, good luck. My solution was to drop out of the class and find a better teacher; I hope you can come up with a better solution than that

Vera12

Thanks for the help. We're going to try it out tomorrow and hopefully it will work. I don't think it is Ales, but I could be wrong. This is his last semester at the community college so dropping out isn't really an option unfortunately.

joshofalltrades

LostNinja wrote: »

Julius wrote: »

Yeah that looks right. Maybe you need to give the physical state of the chemicals too?

This

he said that you need to "check that you have identified all phases in your answer" so you need to add the (l),(s), and (g) where needed.

My college professor wanted us to use (aq) instead of (l), unless the substance wasn't actually an aqueous solution. It seems like a semantic distinction, but an aqueous solution is a more accurate way to describe something and it also reminds you to include the concentration (molarity) of that solution.

Now that I actually am a chemist, I use (aq) in literature that I write and see it in literature I read far more often than (l).

Julius

joshofalltrades wrote: »

LostNinja wrote: »

Julius wrote: »

Yeah that looks right. Maybe you need to give the physical state of the chemicals too?

This

he said that you need to "check that you have identified all phases in your answer" so you need to add the (l),(s), and (g) where needed.

My college professor wanted us to use (aq) instead of (l), unless the substance wasn't actually an aqueous solution. It seems like a semantic distinction, but an aqueous solution is a more accurate way to describe something and it also reminds you to include the concentration (molarity) of that solution.

Now that I actually am a chemist, I use (aq) in literature that I write and see it in literature I read far more often than (l).

How is that a semantic distinction? I can see using (l) instead of (aq) leading to confusion easily.

LostNinja

joshofalltrades wrote: »

LostNinja wrote: »

Julius wrote: »

Yeah that looks right. Maybe you need to give the physical state of the chemicals too?

This

he said that you need to "check that you have identified all phases in your answer" so you need to add the (l),(s), and (g) where needed.

My college professor wanted us to use (aq) instead of (l), unless the substance wasn't actually an aqueous solution. It seems like a semantic distinction, but an aqueous solution is a more accurate way to describe something and it also reminds you to include the concentration (molarity) of that solution.

Now that I actually am a chemist, I use (aq) in literature that I write and see it in literature I read far more often than (l).

(aq) is right, it's been a few years since a took chem and I was terrible at it to begin with,how I passed organic is still a mystery to me.

joshofalltrades

Julius wrote: »

joshofalltrades wrote: »

LostNinja wrote: »

Julius wrote: »

Yeah that looks right. Maybe you need to give the physical state of the chemicals too?

This

he said that you need to "check that you have identified all phases in your answer" so you need to add the (l),(s), and (g) where needed.

My college professor wanted us to use (aq) instead of (l), unless the substance wasn't actually an aqueous solution. It seems like a semantic distinction, but an aqueous solution is a more accurate way to describe something and it also reminds you to include the concentration (molarity) of that solution.

Now that I actually am a chemist, I use (aq) in literature that I write and see it in literature I read far more often than (l).

How is that a semantic distinction? I can see using (l) instead of (aq) leading to confusion easily.

To somebody who isn't a chemist, it might seem like a semantic distinction, but it actually isn't. That's what I meant.

Point being, be sure to use (aq) when appropriate or if your professor is like mine was and counts off for stuff like that, you might wanna be sure you get the distinction correct. Water is a liquid because there's no water solution, it's just water alone; HCl is an aqueous solution and molarity is important.