Limiting and excess reactants: quantitative | Developing understanding | 14–16 years

Developing understanding is a series of resources that encourage learners to connect their thinking at the macroscopic, sub-microscopic and symbolic levels. This worksheet will promote quantitative understanding of limiting and excess reactants as learners think about how information from a balanced chemical equation (symbolic understanding) and the number of moles of each reactant at the start (sub-microscopic understanding) can be used to determine the limiting reactant and the number of moles of product that could be formed. Learners are supported by the use of bar diagrams to visualise the amount in moles which guides them to understand the calculations needed.