Single-Displacement+C.+Fuller

Single-displacement is the process of one element in a compound being exchanged (or replaced) for a different element. Single-displacement may be shown generically as X + YZ --> XZ + Y, with X and YZ being exchanged for XZ + Y.

A real life example of single-displacement would be the following statement: Sodium reacts with water to form sodium hydroxide and hydrogen gas. The conversion of this statement into single-displacement would be to replace the statement with the given elemental symbols, so in this case it would be: Na + H2O --> NaOH + H2. Then, we must balance this equation or else it will not be stable. To do so, we must place the opposite of a given number to counter any positivity or negativity. So in this case, we would place the numbers two in front of both sodiums, and a two in front of the left hydrogen. The result is as follows: 2Na + 2H2O --> 2NaOH + H2.



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