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Chemistry Stoody Guide

Ionic Equations

  1. Write the full and net ionic equations for a reaction and identify spectator ions.

Ionic Equations

Ionic equations are those where the formulas of the dissolved aqueous solutions (salts) are written as individual ions, i.e. because they are dissociated.

So, for some silver bromide dissolved in water, it’d be:

With the molecular equation:

Full & Net Ionic Equations, as well as Spectator Ions

Ions that don’t contribute to the reaction once dissociated.

If you mixed some with some and dissolved them in water, you’d get the following 4 ions:

Imagine this reacts to form some kinda crust, e.g. . The full ionic equation’d look like this:

You, with your redoubtable intellectual ability, may notice a couple of those aren’t doing anything; namely, and . These’re the spectator ions, because they’ren’t involved in the reaction. To make things cleaner, you can remove them to construct the net ionic equation: