CHEMICAL COMBINATIONSAND CHEMICAL EQUATION

Laws of Chemical Combinations

There are four laws of chemical combinations these laws explained the general feature of
chemical change. These laws are:
1. Law of Conservation of Mass
2. Law of Definite Proportions
3. Law of Multiple Proportions
4. Law Reciprocal Proportions
Antoine Lavoiser has rejected the worn out ideas about the changes that take place during
a chemical reaction. He made careful quantitative measurements in chemical reactions and
established that mass is neither created nor nor destroyed in a chemical change.

Law of

Conservation of Mass
Statement
It is presented by Lavoiser. It is defined as:
"Mass is neither created nor destroyed during a chemical reaction but it only changes
from one form to another form."
In a chemical reaction, reactants are converted to products. But the total mass of the
reactants and products remains the same. The following experiment easily proves law of
conservation of mass.
Practical Verification (Landolt Experiment)
German chemist H. Landolt, studied about fifteen different chemical reactions with a
great skill, to test the validity of the law of conservation of mass. For this, he took
H.shaped tube and filled the two limbs A and B, with silver nitrate (AgNO3) in limb A and
Hydrochloric Acid (HCl) in limb B. The tube was sealed so that material could not escape
outside. The tube was weighed initially in a vertical position so that the solution should not
intermix with each other. The reactant were mixed by inverting and shaking the tube. The
tube was weighed after mixing (on the formation of white precipitate of AgCl). He
observed that weight remains same.
HCl + AgNO3 ----------> AgCl + NaNO3

Law of Definite Proportions

Statement
It is presented by Proust. It is defined as:
"When different elements combine to give a pure compound, the ratio between the

masses of these elements will always remain the same."

Proust proved experimentally that compound obtained from difference source will always
contain same elements combined together in fixed proportions.
Example
Water can be obtained from different sources such as river, ocean, well, canal, tube well,
rain or by the chemical combination of hydrogen and oxygen. If different samples of water
are analyzed, it will have two elements, hydrogen and oxygen and the ratio between their
mass is 1:8.

Law of Multiple Proportions

Statement
This law is defined as:
"When two elements combine to give more than one compounds, the different masses
of one element, which will combine with the fixed mass of other element, will be in
simple whole number ratio."
Two different elements can combine to form more than one compound. They can do so by
combining in different ratios to give different compounds.
Example
Hydrogen and oxygen combine with one another to form water (H2O) and hydrogen
peroxide (H2O2). In water and hydrogen oxide 2 g of hydrogen combine with 16g and 32g
of oxygen respectively. According to law of multiple proportions, the different masses of
oxygen (16g and 32g) which have reacted with fixed mass (2g) of hydrogen will have a
simple ratio between each other i.e. 16:32 or 1:2. It means that hydrogen peroxide
contains double the number of oxygen atoms than water. This law proves this point of
Dalton's Atomic Theory that atoms do not break in a chemical reaction.

Law of Reciprocal Proportions

Statement
This law is defined as:
"When two element A, B combine separately, with the mixed mass of the third
element E, the ratio in which these elements combine with E is either the same or
simple multiple of the ratio in which A and B combine with each other."
Example
Hydrogen and Nitrogen separately combine to form ammonia (NH3) and dinitrogen oxide
(N2O), in these compounds, fixed mass of nitrogen is 14g and combines with 8 g of oxygen
and 3 g of hydrogen. The ratio between the mass of oxygen and hydrogen is 8:3. Hydrogen
and oxygen also combine with one another to form water (H2O). The ratio between
hydrogen and oxygen in water is 16:2. These ratios are not same. Let us observe whether

these ratios are simple multiple to each other or not following mathematical operation is
carried out.
8:3 ::16:2
8/3 : 16/2
or
8/3 x 2/16
or
1/3 => 1:3

Definitions
Atomic Mass
The mass of an atom of the element relative to the mass of some reference or standard
element is called atomic mass. Atoms are very small particles. They have very small mass.
If the masses of atoms were to be expressed in gram. It is a very big unit for this very
tiny object. Then it was decided by the chemists that masses of the atoms were to be
found after comparing with mass to some standard form.
Hydrogen being the lightest element is taken as standard. The mass of the hydrogen atom
taken as one.
The atomic mass could be defined as
"Atomic mass of an element is the mass of an atom of that element as compared to
the mass of an atom of hydrogen taken as one."
Example
The atomic mass of sodium is 23. It means that an atom of sodium is 23 times heavier than
hydrogen atom. Similarly atomic mass of oxygen is 16. It means that an atom of oxygen is
16 times heaviest than that of hydrogen.

Atom
The smallest particle of an element which cannot exist independently and take part in a
chemical reaction is known as Atom.
Examples
Hexogen(H), Carbon (C), Sodium (Na), Gold (Au) etc.

Molecule
The particle of a substance (Element or Compound) which can exist independently and show
all the properties of that substance is called molecule.
Atoms of the same or different elements react with each other and form molecule.
Atoms of some elements can exist independently, since they have property of molecule so
they are called mono atomic molecule.
Examples

Examples of Molecules of the elements are Hydrogen (H2). Nitrogen (N2), Sulphur (S8)
etc.
Molecules of different elements are called compounds. For example HCl, H2O, CH4 etc.

Valency
The combining capacity of all elements with other elements is called valency.
Example
H=1
C=4
Al = 3
Mg = 2
Na = 1