Question

What is the difference between a chemical reaction and a chemical equation?

Answer 1

Hint: You can think of this example, the formation of a water molecule is by hydrogen and oxygen. You can write this in two forms, one form will be the representation of this process and another will be the representation in chemical form.

Complete step by step answer:
We can use these terms interchangeably, but although they're related, they're different things.
Chemical reaction - A chemical reaction is a process that occurs when one or more substances are changed into one or more new substances.
Examples: Hydrogen and oxygen gas combine to produce water.
Sodium chloride (table salt) dissociates in water to form sodium and chloride ions.
Methane combusts in oxygen to form carbon dioxide, heat, and water.

Chemical equation - A chemical equation is a symbolic representation of a chemical reaction, with the reactants on the left side and the products on the right side, separated by an arrow. The reactants and products are represented by their chemical formulas, based on elements as they are on the periodic table.
Example: A reaction between magnesium metal and zinc sulfate solution produces magnesium sulfate in solution and zinc metal. This is a single displacement reaction. The equation representing this reaction is written :
$Mg(s)\quad +\quad ZnSO_{ 4 }(aq)\quad \rightarrow \quad MgSO_{ 4 }(aq)\quad +\quad Zn(s)$
Therefore, we have differentiated between a chemical reaction and a chemical equation.

Note: Here we can also know the definition of a similar term chemical formula.
Chemical formula - A chemical formula represents an element or compound in balanced equations. The formulae for most elements is just their symbol. Some non-metal elements exist as simple molecules with two atoms joined together. We say that these elements are diatomic.
Example: $ZnSO_{ 4 }$