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What is a chemical reaction? What factors influence the rate of a chemical reaction? What are the types of chemical reactions? What is a chemical reaction? A chemical reaction is material changing from a beginning mass to a resulting substance. The hallmark of a chemical reaction is that new material or materials are made, along with the disappearance of the mass that changed to make the new. This does not mean that new elements have been made. In order to make new elements, the nuclear contents must change. There are magnitudes of difference in the amounts of energy in ordinary chemical reactions compared to nuclear reactions. The energy of rearrangement of the nuclei of atoms to change to new elements is enormous compared to the smaller energies of chemical changes. The alchemists, in their efforts to change less expensive metals to gold, did not have the fundamental understanding of what they were attempting to do to appreciate the difference. A chemical equation is a way to describe what goes on in a chemical reaction, the actual change in a material. Chemical equations are written with the symbols of materials to include elements, ionic or covalent compounds, aqueous solutions, ions, or particles. There is an arrow pointing to the right that indicates the action of the reaction. The materials to the left of the arrow are the reactants, or materials that are going to react. The materials to the right of the arrow are the products, or materials that have been produced by the reaction. The Law of Conservation of Mass states that in a chemical reaction no mass is lost or gained. The Law of Conservation of Mass applies to individual types of atom. One could say that for any element, there is no loss or gain of that element in a chemical reaction. There are such things as reversible reactions, reactions in which the products reassemble to become the original products. Reversible reactions are symbolized in chemical equations by a double-headed arrow, but the standard remains to call the materials on the left the reactants and the materials on the right the products. What factors influence the rate of a chemical reaction? Temperature Concentrations of reactants Catalysts Surface area of a solid reactant Pressure of gaseous reactants or products What will happen to the rate of the reaction when I increase the temperature? What will happen to the rate of the reaction if I increase the concentration of one of the reactants? The answer to that question is your prediction. The next thing to do is to explain your prediction. You will have to answer the question: Why will the reaction go faster if I increase the temperature? or Why will the reaction go faster if I increase the concentration of one of the reactions? The answer to this question is your explanation, and to get the highest possible marks, you will have to provide a full scientific explanation. Once you have written your hypothesis (prediction with explanation) you will decide how to do the experiments, i.e. write the proposed method. How does temperature affect the rate of a chemical reaction? When two chemicals react, their molecules have to collide with each other with sufficient energy for the reaction to take place. This is collision theory. The two molecules will only react if they have enough energy. By heating the mixture, you will raise the energy levels of the molecules involved in the reaction. Increasing temperature means the molecules move faster. This is kinetic theory. If your reaction is between atoms rather than molecules you just substitute "atom" for "molecule" in your explanation. How do catalysts affect the rate of a reaction? Catalysts speed up chemical reactions. Only very minute quantities of the catalyst are required to produce a dramatic change in the rate of the reaction. This is really because the reaction proceeds by a different pathway when the catalyst is present. Adding extra catalyst will make absolutely no difference. There is a whole page on this site devoted to catalysts. How does concentration affect the rate of a reaction? Increasing the concentration of the reactants will increase the frequency of collisions between the two reactants. So this is collision theory again. You also need to discuss kinetic theory in an experiment where you vary the concentration. Although you keep the temperature constant, kinetic theory is relevant. This is because the molecules in the reaction mixture have a range of energy levels. When collisions occur, they do not always result in a reaction. If the two colliding molecules have sufficient energy they will react. If reaction is between a substance in solution and a solid, you just vary the concentration of the solution. The experiment is straightforward. If the reaction is between two solutions, you have a slight problem. Do you vary the concentration of one of the reactants or vary the concentration of both? You might find that the rate of reaction is limited by the concentration of the weaker solution, and increasing the concentration of the other makes no difference. What you need to do is fix the concentration of one of the reactants to excess. Now you can increase the concentration of the other solution to produce an increase in the rate of the reaction. How does surface area affect a chemical reaction? If one of the reactants is a solid, the surface area of the solid will affect how fast the reaction goes. This is because the two types of molecule can only bump into each other at the liquid solid interface, i.e. on the surface of the solid. So the larger the surface area of the solid, the faster the reaction will be. Smaller particles have a bigger surface area than larger particle for the same mass of solid. There is a simple way to visualize this. Take a loaf of bread and cut it into slices. Each time you cut a new slice, you get an extra surface onto which you can spread butter and jam. The thinner you cut the slices, the more slices you get and so the more butter and jam you can put on them. This is "Bread and Butter Theory". You should have come across the idea in your biology lessons. By chewing your food you increase the surface area so that digestion can go faster. What affect does pressure have on the reaction between two gasses? You should already know that the atoms or molecules in a gas are very spread out. For the two chemicals to react, there must be collisions between their molecules. By increasing the pressure, you squeeze the molecules together so you will increase the frequency of collisions between them. This is collision theory again. In a diesel engine, compressing the gaseous mixture of air and diesel also increases the temperature enough to produce combustion. Increasing pressure also results in raising the temperature. It is not enough in a petrol engine to produce combustion, so petrol engines need a spark plug. When the petrol air mixture has been compressed, a spark from the plug ignites the mixture. In both cases the reaction (combustion) is very fast. This is because once the reaction has started, heat is produced and this will make it go even faster. What are the types of chemical reactions? http://www.qureshiuniversity.com/chemicalreactions1.html |