Rates of Reaction Experiment :: Papers

Rates of Reaction Experiment Rate of reaction means the rate of formation of a product/disappearance of a reactant, this is useful because we can time the different concentrations reacting with the acid, and give each of them a rate, based on the formula rate = 1/time. Rate of reaction is what we use to measure how quickly a reaction takes to reach a certain point in the reaction in this case it is when it gets to certain cloudiness. In this investigation, we will need to measure the time of the reaction, so we can make a rate for it, to do this we use the formula, - rate = 1/time * 1000, we use the *1000 so that it is a manageable number to plot on a graph if necessary. It is generally measured in time, as this is the only means possible to us; however you must be careful because as heat is a catalyst, it strongly affects the rate as you will see in the results, so we have to try and keep it the same throughout the experiment. The reaction we are studying is very easy to monitor and time. All of the products in the solution dissolve into it (sodium chloride, sulphur dioxide and water), apart from sulphur, which makes the solution go cloudy, and forms a precipitate. This can be written down as s-1for example 15.7 s-1means 15.7 per second is the rate of the reaction. The rate is generally measured by selecting a certain amount of two substances, and finding a suitable way of judging when the reaction has finished, the reaction is then timed, and when you have a time, you put it into the formula rate = 1/time *1000.This is the only method available to us, because it can not be done any other way for this experiment, but others may be measured in different ways, i.e. mass loss, or amount of gas evolved could be measured. The Equations for this experiment are: Sodium thiosulphate + Hydrochloric acid à   Sodium chloride + sulphur +