Electron equivalent

Electron equivalent is like counting the number of toys you have. Just like you can count toys, scientists count electrons to see how many of them are in a chemical reaction. However, sometimes, scientists need to compare different chemicals and reactions. In such cases, it's not enough to just count the number of electrons in each reaction. This is because electrons come in different sizes, and some electrons are more important and have more impact on a reaction than others.

So, scientists came up with a way to compare the impact of different electrons on a reaction. And they called this method, 'electron equivalent'. When scientists use the term 'electron equivalent', they are saying that one molecule of a certain substance has the same impact on a reaction as a specific number of electrons.

For example, imagine you have two different molecules, A and B. You count the number of electrons in each molecule and find out that A has 10 electrons, while B has 20 electrons. However, electron equivalent tells you that A is equivalent to 2 electrons, while B is equivalent to 4 electrons. So, in terms of their impact on a chemical reaction, A is half as important as B, even though it has fewer electrons.

In summary, electron equivalent is a way scientists compare the impact of different electrons on a chemical reaction and express it in terms of the number of electrons required to produce the same effect.