Do you think that balanced equations reflect exactly what happens in the actual reactions? explain....?

Answer 1

Balanced chemical equations are really only a starting point. For one, by themselves they don't give any indication about how far the reaction goes (ie, whether the chemicals in question react until one is completely gone or until the rates of the forward and reverse reactions are equal, meaning they have reached equilibrium).

Secondly, they don't always show whether the reaction involves the use of a catalyst or a particular solvent, or whether you have to add something, such as heat, to the reaction in order to get it to go, or speed up, or push equilibrium further towards the products. I say "not always" because you can indicate a catalyst or the addition of heat by writing it above the reaction arrow.

Thirdly, they ignore the intermediates and the intermediary steps, and don't take the individual behaviour of each molecule into consideration. For example, they don't take resonance structures, or electron delocalization, or isomerization into consideration, even though these things all affect the reactivity of a molecule, and what the products will be.

Fourthly, the chemical equation by itself doesn't give much of a clue as to the reaction mechanisms. Again, you lack information about how the reaction itself takes place.


I could easily keep going, but you get the general idea; balanced chemical equations are useful, but bear in mind that they really only reflect the idealized, oversimplified case. In reality that simple chemical reaction is actually representing unimaginably large numbers of molecules flying around, colliding, but only reacting when the right molecules collide in the right way, under the right conditions, with sufficient energy, oriented the right way, etc etc.

Answer 2

No, they are not accurate. The whole topic area of spectator ions and ionic equations shows us that we can simplify full equations a great deal, and thereby get down to what is actually going on.