In Chemistry, compounds are defined as any substance that is composed of atoms of two or more elements that are combined in fixed ratios. Compounds can often be reduced in order to separate their elements and study their properties. Compounds such as water (H2O) and Carbon Dioxide (CO2) for example, both contain oxygen and can therefore undergo a process of decomposition that will isolate the elements in order to calculate the quantity of each element and molecule present in the compound. Any compound with oxygen can be decomposed through the addition of heat which will eventually release the oxygen, thereby leaving only the other elements. Decomposition reactions are essentially chemical changes in which a single compound is broken down into two or more single products (Wilbraham, 2008). …show more content…
In order to measure the quantity of each molecule present, Stoichiometry was used to test the quantitative relationship between products and reactants in a chemical reaction (Graves, 2014). Stoichiometry is helpful because it uses amount of the starting reactant to estimate the amount of products formed and vice versa. The chemical equation must be balanced, meaning all of the atoms present in the reactants side must also be present in the products side (Burdge, 2014). By using the right quantities in a balanced chemical reaction, the amount of products desired can be determined as well as the quantities of the reactions using mole to mole and mole to mass ratios (Burdge, 2014). For example, using the chemical