How do you balance chemical equations with polynomials?

I am scared for my life cause im taking a honors chemistry test this monday and I don't know how to balance chemical equations with polynomials.





I should have paid attention to the teacher. T_T Please help me someone.|||Its pretty simple, but can be tricky at first.





You just have to balance the number of atoms on both sides of the equation ......Reactants ---%26gt; Products.





For example.





H + OH -----%26gt; H20.





This is very simple example... but see tehre's 2 H's on the reactant hand side and 2 H's on the product side. Same with Oxygen. This equation is balanced.





Now lets say it doesnt match up..im making this one up btw.





Li + Al ------%26gt; LiAl4





The reactants only has 1 Al ...and the right has 4 Al's, so to balance you need to put:





Li + 4Al ---%26gt; LiAl4 ..balanced.





I'm gonan extend it.. now lets say you have something like this..





Fe^2+ + O^-2 ---%26gt; Fe2O2





basically you cross the exponential charges to get the final product.. however, you can simplify it to FeO. I don't know what' you're really looking for. haha good luck!