Science Common Sense

1740 - What happens to the atoms in a chemical reaction where the principles of conservation of mass, atoms, charge, and energy are observed.

Imagine you have building blocks called atoms that make up everything around us. When these building blocks or atoms interact with each other, it's called a chemical reaction.

In a chemical reaction:

• The atoms don't disappear or get destroyed. They just get rearranged to form something new (principle of conservation of mass and atoms).
• No new atoms are created, and none are lost.
• The atoms might share or swap the tiny particles called electrons to become more stable (principle of conservation of charge).
• Energy might be added to or released from the reaction, but the total energy remains the same (principle of conservation of energy).

So, in a chemical reaction, the atoms get rearranged, but they're still the same atoms. They just form something new and different.