Question

A shorthand way of representing a chemical change is to use ………………… equation.
A. word
B. condensation
C. compound
D. products

Answer 1

During chemical change, one or more new substances are formed from the original substance and the new substance formed will have different properties than that of original substance. Chemical change is also known as chemical reaction. Rusting of iron is an example of a chemical change.

Complete step by step answer:
During a chemical change, the chemical composition of reactants changes to form products.
A chemical change can be represented using a chemical equation or a word equation. To write a word equation, only the names of reactants reacted, and the products formed are used. The word equation of a chemical reaction will be composed of the name of the reactants involved, names of the product formed and the arrow to indicate the direction in which the chemical reaction is proceeding.
Remember that the reactants are placed at the left-hand side of the chemical equation whereas, the products are placed at the right-hand side of the chemical equation. The arrow to indicate the direction in which the reaction is proceeding will be placed between the reactants and products. Make sure to draw the head of the arrow pointing towards the product side, from the left side of the chemical equation to the right side of the chemical equation.
The general representation of this is given below.
$Reactants \to Products$
Let us take an example of chemical change of formation of water. When sodium metal reacts with chlorine gas, the sodium chloride or common salt is produced. This can be represented using a word equation as follows:
$sodium + chlorine \to sodium{\rm{ }}chloride$
A word equation is good in order to understand the concept of reactant, product and the direction of the reaction.

Therefore, the correct answer is option (A) word.

Additional information:
Unlike chemical equations, do not use any chemical formulae, symbols of the elements, numbers and state of matter of the reactants involved and products formed.
For example, when magnesium reacts with oxygen, magnesium oxide is formed. This chemical reaction can be written in the form of word equation and chemical equation as follows:
$magnesium + oxygen \to magnesium{\rm{ }}oxide$
$2M{g_{(s)}} + {O_{2(g)}} \to 2Mg{O_{(s)}}$
The word equation is very useful in order to denote the chemical reaction using words, but it does not indicate how many moles of the reactants reacted or the number of moles of the products formed.

Note: As we know, when a word equation is used for representing a chemical change or chemical reaction, it will not use numbers. But, for a few chemical reactions we need to use numbers while writing a word equation. The use of numbers is for the purpose of denoting the oxidation state of the reactant. This will help in accurately writing a word equation for that reaction.
For example, when copper reacts with oxygen, it is necessary to understand whether copper(I) or copper(II) was involved in the chemical reaction. It can be expressed as “copper reacts with oxygen to form copper(II) oxide.
$copper + oxygen \to copper(II){\rm{ }}oxide$