Reactants and Products

To describe a chemical reaction, we need to indicate what substances are present at the beginning and what substances are present at the end. The substances that are present at the beginning are called reactants and the substances present at the end are called products.

Sometimes when reactants are put into a reaction vessel, a reaction will take place to produce products. Reactants are the starting materials, that is, whatever we have as our initial ingredients. The products are just that, wheat is produced or the result of what happens to the reactants when we put them together in the reaction vessel. If we think about baking chocolate chip cookies, our reactants would be flour, butter, sugar, vanilla, some baking soda, salt, egg, and chocolate chips. What would be the products? Cookies! The reaction vessel would be our mixing bowl.