balance equation

[chemistryishard]

C5H12O + O2 CO2 + H2O

the numbers in dark red are ment to be subscript:

can anyone help me balance this equation, i can not.

[TIDUSGIYA]

The Fact That You Have Numbers In Your Equation Is Irrelivent.

C5h12o + O2 Co2 + H2o

C5h120 Is Alcohol, Added With Oxygine Will Give You Co2

This Effect Would Give You Water Or H20.

To Balance This Out Would Be. Alcohol + O2 = Co2
Co2 + Water Or (h20) = Ice.

Whats The Balance.

[P-man]

Well to actually balance the equation the numbers are relevant. Yet I can't seem to balance this one aout either. It's rather tricky, with an odd number of C and O atoms and an even number of H atoms.

[MortenS]

I will take this stepwise:

C5H11OH + O2 -> CO2 + H2O

1. Count the number of C's on each side: 5 on left, and 1 on right side:
2. Multiply CO2 with 5

We are now at:

C5H11OH + O2 -> 5CO2 + H2O

4.Now count the number of H's on each side: 12 on left, side, 2 on right side.
5. To balance hydrogen, multiply H2O with 6

We now have:

C5H11OH + O2 -> 5CO2 + 6H2O

6: Count the O's on each side to find out if there is any imbalance in oxygen: 3 on left side, 16 on right side. We need 13 more O on the left side, and the only allowed molecule to add now is more oxygen.

Here comes the trick: use fractional molecules while balancing the equation:

We add 6.5 molecules of O2 (which equals 13 atoms of O), and get a total of 7.5 O2 molecules on the left side.

We now have:

C5H11OH + 7.5O2 -> 5CO2 + 6H2O

We usually do not present balanced equations with fractions, so to get rid of the fraction, we multiply the whole equation with 2:

2C5H11OH + 15O2 -> 10CO2 + 12H2O

10 C on left, 10 C on right
24 H on left, 24 H on right
32 O on left, 32 O on right

[P-man]

Cool trick. I tried to use it but I couldn't get it to work.