Single displacement reaction

Have you ever played with toy cars and trucks? Imagine you have two toy cars of different colors, let's say a red one and a blue one. Now, let's pretend that the red car is a bad guy and the blue car is a good guy.

If you take the red car and put it into a toy garage where the blue car is parked, what do you think will happen? The red car will bump into the blue car, right?

This is a bit like what happens in a single displacement reaction. In chemistry, we have different chemicals that are made up of different atoms. When two chemicals come into contact, they may react with each other and swap some of their atoms.

For example, if we have a chemical called zinc (which is like the red car) and we put it in contact with a chemical called hydrochloric acid (which is like the blue car), the zinc will bump into the hydrochloric acid and take a hydrogen atom from the acid. The zinc and the hydrogen will stick together to form a new chemical called hydrogen gas.

So, just like when you put the red car into the garage with the blue car and they bumped into each other, in a single displacement reaction, the two chemicals bump into each other and swap some of their atoms to form new chemicals.