What factors can affect rate of reaction?

Essay by LuddersHigh School, 10th gradeA-, March 2006

download word file, 3 pages 5.0

There are several factors which can affect the Rate of Reaction. These include:

1) Temperature:

At higher temperature, the particles have more kinetic energy. They move more rapidly through the solution, they collide more often and more vigorously, so the chance of a reaction increases. The time taken for a certain amount of collisions to occur decreases, so the overall time for the reaction to occur would also decrease. This will be counteracted in our experiment, as we will be using a constant temperature to assure that the experiment is a fair test. As the temperature increases, the rate of reaction will also increase positively.

2) Concentration.

This is the factor that we will be changing in our experiment. Concentration is the measure of how much of a given substance there is mixed with another substance. This can apply to any sort of chemical mixture, but most frequently is used in relation to solutions, where it refers to the amount of solute dissolved in a solvent.

To concentrate a solution, you must add more solute, or reduce the amount of solvent. Evaporation would be an example of this process. To dilute a solution, you must add more solvent, or reduce the amount of solute. There exists a concentration at which no further solute will dissolve in a solution. At this point, the solution is said to be saturated. If additional solute is added to a saturated solution, it will not dissolve.

This factor affects the rate of reaction by increasing the amount of particles which are contained in the same volume. There are more particles, so the chance of a collision occurring increases. The more collisions that occur in the same period of time, the faster every particle will have reacted and hence the faster the reaction will...