In chemistry, it’s really important to know about reactants and products, especially when learning about chemical reactions.

Think of it like cooking.

• Reactants are the ingredients you put into a recipe.
• Products are the delicious meal you get after everything is mixed and cooked.

Reactants:

• What they are: Reactants are the substances that change during a chemical reaction.
• Example: Imagine burning methane ($CH_4$). The reactants here would be methane and oxygen ($O_2$).

How They Change into Products:

When a chemical reaction happens, reactants interact with each other. This leads to breaking and making bonds, which creates new substances. Here’s a simple way to see how this works:

1. Collisions: The molecules of the reactants bump into each other with enough energy.
2. Break Bonds: The connections holding the reactant molecules together break.
3. Rearrangement: The atoms rearrange and form new bonds.
4. Products Formed: New substances, called products, are created. In the case of burning methane, the products are carbon dioxide ($CO_2$) and water ($H_2O$).

Products:

• What they are: Products are the final substances made by the reaction.
• Example: For our methane example, the products are $CO_2$ and $H_2O$.

Understanding these parts—reactants as the starting materials and products as the final results—helps us see how substances change during chemical reactions.

It’s like a magic show where different materials turn into something completely new!