101 Chemical Reaction Rates
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Learning Objectives
By the end of this section, you will be able to:
- Define chemical reaction rate
- Derive rate expressions from the balanced equation for a given chemical reaction
- Calculate reaction rates from experimental data
A rate is a measure of how some property varies with time. Speed is a familiar rate that expresses the distance traveled by an object in a given amount of time. Wage is a rate that represents the amount of money earned by a person working for a given amount of time. Likewise, the rate of a chemical reaction is a measure of how much reactant is consumed, or how much product is produced, by the reaction in a given amount of time.
The rate of reaction is the change in the amount of a reactant or product per unit time. Reaction rates are therefore determined by measuring the time dependence of some property that can be related to reactant or product amounts. Rates of reactions that consume or produce gaseous substances, for example, are conveniently determined by measuring changes in volume or pressure. For reactions involving one or more colored substances, rates may be monitored via measurements of light absorption. For reactions involving aqueous electrolytes, rates may be measured via changes in a solution’s conductivity.
For reactants and products in solution, their relative amounts (concentrations) are conveniently used for purposes of expressing reaction rates. For example, the concentration of hydrogen peroxide, H2O2, in an aqueous solution changes slowly over time as it decomposes according to the equation:
The rate at which the hydrogen peroxide decomposes can be expressed in terms of the rate of change of its concentration, as shown here:
This mathematical representation of the change in species concentration over time is the rate expression for the reaction. The brackets indicate molar concentrations, and the symbol delta (Δ) indicates “change in.” Thus, \({\left[{\text{H}}_{2}{\text{O}}_{2}\right]}_{{t}_{1}}\) represents the molar concentration of hydrogen peroxide at some time t1; likewise,\({\left[{\text{H}}_{2}{\text{O}}_{2}\right]}_{{t}_{2}}\) represents the molar concentration of hydrogen peroxide at a later time t2; and Δ[H2O2] represents the change in molar concentration of hydrogen peroxide during the time interval Δt (that is, t2<!– no-selfclose –> − t1). Since the reactant concentration decreases as the reaction proceeds, Δ[H2O2] is a negative quantity. Reaction rates are, by convention, positive quantities, and so this negative change in concentration is multiplied by −1. (Figure) provides an example of data collected during the decomposition of H2O2.
To obtain the tabulated results for this decomposition, the concentration of hydrogen peroxide was measured every 6 hours over the course of a day at a constant temperature of 40 °C. Reaction rates were computed for each time interval by dividing the change in concentration by the corresponding time increment,