"Computer Algebra in teaching chemistry: a package for balancing
chemical equations."

Juan Llovet, Carlos Esebbag* 
Departamento de Matematicas 
Universidad de Alcala 



A package prototype designed to balance chemical equations automatically is 
presented. The program, written in Maple V, is able to derive the charge 
and mass balance equations, from a non balanced chemical reaction, and 
solve them by means of the isolve command. As input the user introduces the 
reactants and the products of the reaction written in a natural 
chemical-like syntax. 
The program checks the validity of the data to verify that the mass and 
charge balances are possible, then it returns the balanced equation. 
The two main applications of the package are: 
- A helping tool in learning chemistry at basic level. 
- To teach programming in a computer algebra system to students of chemistry. 
In the second case, the fact that balancing of chemical equations is very 
well known subject for chemistry students allows the usage of the package 
to teach non-trivial programming techniques to this kind of students.