The Use of Vector Approach for Balancing Chemical Equations in Teaching General Inorganic Chemistry

The article is devoted to the problem of the effectiveness of traditional methods of balancing chemical equations in the process of teaching general inorganic chemistry in secondary and higher educational institutions. The analysis shows that classical methods, such as the method of coefficient selection and the method of electronic balance, despite their simplicity and clarity for students, have significant drawbacks when working with large volumes of complex chemical reactions. This leads to significant time spent by teachers on creating, calculating, and checking tasks, as well as to an increase in the likelihood of technical errors in teaching materials. It is proposed to use the vector approach as an alternative, which allows to automate and simplify the process of balancing even the most complex redox and ionic reactions. For the practical implementation of this methodology, a web-based application «Chemical Predictor» has been developed, which supports an unlimited number of reagents and allows obtaining all possible linearly independent solutions for given chemical systems. The peculiarity of the developed tool is its ease of use, which does not require additional knowledge of programming or mathematics, but significantly optimizes the process of creating and checking tasks. The article provides examples for generating tasks (reactions of interaction between carbon and oxygen, transformation of nitrogen compounds), checking the correctness of calculations, creation of educational and methodological materials (reactions of ammonium compounds with calcium reagents), textbooks on inorganic chemistry (ionic reactions with complex compounds of iron and cyanides), as well as ionic reactions (semi-reduction reactions involving MnO₂ and MnO). It has been proven that the use of this methodology can significantly reduce the time spent by teachers on routine calculations, improve the quality of teaching materials, and develop students' self-control skills. Thus, the introduction of the vector approach to balancing chemical equations contributes to a significant increase in the efficiency of the educational process, allowing both teachers and students to focus directly on the study of chemical processes rather than on formal mathematical operations