sometimes we will discuss chemical reactions that occur in aqueous solutions and if these reactions involve ionic solids that dissociate in solution these will be called ionic reactions because the ions that comprise the ionic solids may swap to form new compounds let's look at an example where aqueous calcium chloride and silver nitrate react with one another to form a quiesce calcium nitrate and solid silver chloride remember that the aqueous phase implies that the compound is dissociated in solution we can list the Molecular equation as shown here which shows the ionic substances but in actuality most of these compounds are not intact so we also want to be able to write the net ionic equation which shows the actual chemistry that is happening let's split up each aqueous species into its respective ions which we can do since we know the common charges of these ions calcium chloride will become a calcium ion and two chloride ions two molecules of silver nitrate will become two silver ions and two nitrate ions calcium nitrate is actually a calcium ion and two nitrate ions and silver chloride will remain silver chloride as it is a solid now we have the complete ionic equation but we may notice that there are certain ions on both sides these are called spectator ions because they don't actively participate in chemistry they just sit in solution these can be canceled out like algebraic variables let's rewrite what is left which is simply silver ions and chloride ions coming together to form silver chloride we can divide everything by two to get the least common multiple of each substance and this will give us the net ionic equation this shows us that all that is really happening in solution is chloride ions and silver ions are coming together to form solid silver chloride net ionic equations are the best way to describe the chemistry occurring between ionic solids in aqueous solution