What is a chemical reaction?

Chemical reactions are everywhere in our daily lives, the combustion that takes place in our car engines, the rusting of iron, all the biochemical reactions that are taking place within our bodies like digestion and many more. But what would be a formal definition of a chemical reaction? If you asked a chemist what would be his/her answer? We will try to explain it in an easy way.

First, we need to know that all the substances we see around us are composed of different kinds of atoms. Atoms are the smallest constituents of matter that behold the properties of a specific chemical element.

An atom is composed of a nucleus and one or more electrons bound to the nucleus. The nucleus is made of protons and neutrons. Protons and electrons possess positive and negative charge respectively while neutrons possess no charge. The electrons orbitate the atom´s nucleus because they are attracted to the protons by an electromagnetic force, you can think about it as a small scale solar system.

Also the number of protons in the nucleus defines to what chemical element the atom belongs. For example all carbon atoms contain 6 protons.

Additionally another important aspect we need to discus in order to understand what a chemical reaction is, is the concept of chemical bond. A chemical bond ultimately is an arrangement between electrons of different atoms. In order to picture this we can take a look to the next image based on the Lewis model:

Here we can appreciate the specific configuration of electrons in different elements and molecules,

With this said we can define a chemical reaction as the process in which the configuration of the electrons change and chemical bonds are broken and formed.  This process can be described by a chemical equation.

As simple as that.

Now that you know what a chemical reaction is think about what we have discuss in the post: “the chemical potential of our lives”. Try to imagine the chemical potential as a driving force that causes a chemical reactions to occur and go deeper about this.

Thanks