This is a copy of a little online game at http://www.dun.org/sulan/chembalancer to teach balancing equations. You type numbers in front of each molecule until there are the same number
of atoms on both sides of the equation, then click the 'Balanced' button.
Teachers:
When I had orginally written this as a little VB program it worked really well (ie. all my grade 9 students understood
how to balance equations in an hour). In the follow up class, everyone was able to
balance equations using pencil and paper ... they just drew diagrams using the same heuristic they had
learned playing the game. Here it is a a webpage (no .exe to install) - it works with both Internet Explorer
and Navigator. Click the 'Start Game' button to start playing.
Here is the worksheet to go with the game. I wrote the worksheet using Word 2000, so if you have Word 2000
you can just pick File, Open and locate the file "worksheet.htm" if you want to save a copy to make changes to.