Equation (5) is the balanced equation. This method relies on the general observations made at the beginning of the problem. These observations are intuitive. Depending on the situation, it may be more difficult to solve the problem using intuition rather than using brute force. The brute force method is presented below.
The first step is to assign a different variable coefficient to every compound in the equation.
Since elements must be present in equal amounts on both sides of the equation, a series of equations can be derived in terms of the coefficients. For example, chlorine must be present in equal amounts on both sides of the equation. Therefore, whatever B is, it must be equal to the number of chlorine atoms present in potassium chloride and potassium chlorate. The number of chlorine atoms on the left side is the product of the number of molecules of chlorine and the number of atoms of chlorine per molecule, or 2B. Therefore, one equation relating the variables is
