THE RATES OF CHEMICAL REACTION

Teacher’s guide/Chemistry form 4 / simulation

Scientific concept

Reaction rate or rate of reaction is a measure of how fast a reaction occurs. A reaction can occur
at different rates under different conditions. Conditions that affect the rate of reaction include
temperature, reactant concentration, surface area and the presence of a catalyst.

Temperature effects
The rate of virtually every reaction increase as the temperature increase (as a rough of thumb, a
10ºC increase doubles the reaction rate). Consider the potentially explosive reaction between
hydrogen and oxygen to yield water. Although the reaction is highly exothermic, a mixture of
hydrogen and oxygen will sit in a bottle indefinitely without noticeable formation of water.
Before the oxygen can begin to form bonds with hydrogen, the hydrogen-hydrogen and oxygen-
oxygen bonds must begin to break. The cleavage of bonds requires energy. Apparently this
process requires more energy than most of the molecules have at ambient temperature. As the
temperature of the system is increased, the fraction of molecules with sufficient energy to
undergo bond cleavage upon a collision increase dramatically and the rate of reaction increase.

Concentration effects
The dependence of the rate of rate of reaction on the concentration of reactions is more
intuitively understandable. An increase in the concentrations of the reactants will often increase
the reaction rate. Consider a reaction between hydrogen and iodine to produce hydrogen iodide
(H2 + I2 = HI). For the reaction to proceed, a collision between H2 and I2 should quadruple the
number of collisions and the rate. The rate is expressed as a change in the amount of a reaction,
Δ[H2] per unit time, t or rate = Δ[H2] / Δt. In this reaction, the rate should be proportional to the
concentrations of H2 and I2 or :

Δ[H2] / Δt = -k [H2] [I2]

Where k is the proportionally constant that is called the rate constant. The above rate expression
is consistent with the conclusions above that a doubling of the concentration of either hydrogen
or iodine should double the rate.

UNIQUE FEATURE OF THIS ACTIVITY

1. Students are able to visualize the movement of molecule depends on the temperature and
concentration.
2. Students are able to understand how the temperature and concentration affect the rate of
chemical reaction.
 ENGAGE

MAKING DRINKS

You are given the pictures as shown below:

1. What is the relationship of concentration of sugar and temperature of water in making

drink?
2. How long the time is needed for the sugar to dissolve in water if more or less sugar is
used?
3. How long the time is needed for the sugar to dissolve if hot or cold water is used to
making drink?
EMPOWER

Steps
1. Students are allowed to explore what makes the reaction happen by colliding atoms and
molecules by simulation.
2. Log on the web side and observe the animation to answer the question.
http://phet.colorado.edu/simulations/sims.php?sim=Reactions_and_Rates
Then, click run now!

RESULTS

1. For single collision

2. For many collision

3. For rate experiments

Questions:

1. What the effect of temperature on the rate of reactions? Explain.

2. What the effect of concentration on the rate of reaction? Explain.

Answers :

1. The average kinetic energy of a substance increase when the temperature rises. An increase
in kinetic energy causes the reaction rate to increase in two ways that are it increase the
collision rate and it increase the fraction of collisions that are effective. The collision rate
increases because the molecules move faster at higher temperatures, so they collide more
frequently. The fraction of effective collision also increases, because the average kinetic
energy of the molecules increases.
2. A reaction may go faster when the concentration of one or more of the reactants increases.
Such an increase in concentration increases the numbers of reactant per unit volume.
Because molecules are closer together, the number of collision per unit time increases. As
total collisions increase, the number of molecules that have the orientation and energy
required for the reaction also increases. However, the fraction of effective collisions remains
the same because the temperature and kinetic energy are constant. Thus, the rate of reaction
becomes increases.
 ENHANCE

Questions
1. What are the elements that you see from the picture above?
2. Explain the chemical reaction which occurs above?
3. How is the rate of the reaction between those two elements?
4. What happened when the temperature of the surroundings is increase above 100°C?

Answers
1. Hydrogen and Oxygen
2. Two hydrogen atoms, 2 H2 form the bond with one oxygen atom, O2 to
produce one water molecule, H2O
3. The reaction occurs slowly, where the atoms bonding to form water very
slowly.
4. The hydrogen bond between different water molecules will be broken and
condensed quickly based on the temperature at that time.