ShmoopTube

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[ musical flourish ]

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And here's your Shmoop du jour, brought to you by baking.

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It's a chemical reaction you can stuff your face with.

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All right, well, the starting materials involved in a chemical reaction are called the, uh, what?

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And here are the potential answers.

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[ mumbles ]

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All right, well, chemistry requires precision.

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So to be a good chemist, we can't just take

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a handful of this and a pinch of that and expect to get the result we want.

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And the same thing goes for science lingo.

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The words scientists use have precise meanings.

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So with that, we can immediately rule out option A - supply

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because it lacks that precision. Like, it could be anything.

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The word "supply" isn't specific to materials involved in a chemical reaction.

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We can also get rid of option C because the word "resultant"

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isn't really a word used in chemistry.

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But even so, we can tell that it wouldn't be right because

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the question is about starting materials, not the result.

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All right? All right. Well, D's out, too.

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The product is what the chemical reaction produces.

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It's what we end up with. The answer we're looking for is B - reactant.

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Reactants are the starting materials of a chemical reaction.

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Think of bread. Ingredients:

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the water, the yeast, the flour, the salt.

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Those are the reactants.

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And when you put them together and add heat for a while,

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the product is just a big fat loaf of yumminess. Yum. Bread.

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All right, we just need to be careful not to eat all of our science

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in one sitting. Otherwise, well, there could be a bad chemical reaction.

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Yeah. Stomach ache. You don't wanna go there.

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