[SlimyBookworm]

Hello,
I have never done any chemistry, but am very willing to learn.  I have recently been reading about copper plating, electrolysis and making glass conductive etc.  The thing that is holding me back at the moment is not fully understanding the equations.

Would it be possible to give me some search terms for google (or point me to an online book) that will help me with the following.

Firstly, suppose I have a formula (not sure if thats what you call it)  I know that one side has to equal the other.  If you have H20 on one side, you'll need 2 H's and an O on the other.  But I've also been seeing ⁺⁺ or ^-- in them such as;
Na⁺ + Cl^- + H₂0  HCl + Na⁺ + OH^-   (I copied this from another post here - I have no idea what it actually means! I just want to show an example of the + and -)

I'm assuming these have something to do with electrons.  In the same similar articles I see E=0.001 or something like that.  From what I can tell 'E' represents a 'magic number' that causes electrons to be repelled from one thing and attracted to another.  Is that the right sort of thing?

Finally, are you able to tell from the +,- and E's if something will be (or how well it will be) a conductor of electricity?

So... any words or phrases that might help me search and understand that things I'm reading about would be very welcome!

Thank you.

[Arctic-Nation]

That's an excellent question for someone who's just starting to understand chemistry. However, by a freak coincidence you managed to copy an equation that in almost all cases is equal to cursing in a church. Don't sweat it though.

Plusses and minuses in superscript indeed are a representation of the number of electrons a compound or atom is currently carrying. A plus means it's lost an electron (compared to the neutral atom/compound), two plusses means it's lost 2 electrons, etc. The opposite goes for a minus, this means it gained an electron. The process of acquiring or losing electrons is called ionization.
Ionization happens because many atoms (and molecules) in a pure state are rather unstable. Taking iron metal, for example, you know that if you leave something made of iron in wet conditions, it will start to rust. This is simply the formation of iron oxide, in which iron loses electrons (is oxidized) to atmospheric oxygen (which is reduced). Iron oxide has the formula Fe₂O₃, which means that every iron atom has lost 3 electrons, and each oxygen atom has gained 2 electrons.
In the end, when writing chemical equations, not only do atoms need to be balanced out, but charges too (this doesn't mean that your equation as a whole needs to be neutral, it just needs to have the same net charge on each side).

E is something that can mean several things, but in this case I'm going to guess that you mean redox potential. This is a measure of how easily an atom/compound/ion gains or loses one or more electrons (is reduced or oxidized). To put it shortly, any atom, ion or compound will give electrons to any other atom, ion or compound which has a larger or more positive (reduction) potential. Iron, for example, has a low reduction potential, and as such will reduce many compounds with a more positive one, such as oxygen.

Hope this helps.

[Borek]

Plusses and minuses in superscript indeed are a representation of the number of electrons a compound or atom is currently carrying.

I call it a charge.