Chemical Kinetics Lab

Chemical kinetics focuses on the rates in which chemical reactions take place; in other words, it describes how quickly reactants are consumed and how quickly products are produced. When observing the reaction rate, an important factor to take into consideration is the reactant concentration, in which the rate is ultimately dependent on. To determine the rate order, data must be collected experimentally and then analyzed using Excel. Because the initial concentrations of each trial are known in the beginning of the experiment, the initial rate method would be used to obtain the data.
In this lab, the purpose of this experiment is to explore the effect of concentration and temperature on the initial rate reaction of permanganate (MnO4-) and mandalate (M) by conducting various trials with different initial concentrations of permanganate. These results were then analyzed to calculate the order of the reaction with respect to permanganate (PM). In the second part of the lab, the initial concentration of PM remained the same, but varied in the …show more content…
The overall reaction was a second order reaction, in which the reaction order with respect to each reactant was 1. This ultimately indicates the effect of concentration in regards to the rate of the reaction. For example, if the concentration of the reactant, in this case permanganate since mandalate remained consistent, were doubled, the rate of reaction would also double. In regards to the activation energy the reaction of permanganate and mandalate, the energy needed to begin the reaction is 729251.8643 kJ. Additionally, by doing such calculations and data analysis, we could observe the relationship between the rate law, reactant concentration, and the rate order. Overall, the lab taught us how to relate the effect of concentration and temperature on the initial rate of the redox reaction of permanganate and