Measuring rates of reaction

There are two ways to find the rate of a reaction:

measure the rate at which a reactant is used up

measure the rate at which a product is formed

The method chosen depends on the reaction being studied. Sometimes it is easier
to measure the change in the amount of a reactant that has been used up;
sometimes it is easier to measure the change in the amount of a product that has
been produced.

Things to measure
The measurement itself depends on the nature of the reactant or product:

the mass of a substance - solid, liquid or gas - is measured with a balance

the volume of a gas is usually measured with a gas syringe, or sometimes an
upside-down measuring cylinder or burette

Measuring the production of a gas using a gas syringe

Factors affecting the rates of reaction

You will be expected to remember the factors that affect the rate of reactions, and
to plot or interpret graphs from rate experiments.

How to increase the rate of a reaction

The rate of a reaction increases if:

The temperature is increased

The concentration of a dissolved reactant is increased
The pressure of a reacting gas is increased
Solid reactants are broken into smaller pieces
A catalyst is used

Rate of reaction and changing conditions

The graph above summarises the differences in the rate of reaction at different
temperatures, concentrations and size of pieces. The steeper the line, the greater
the rate of reaction. Reactions are usually fastest at the beginning, when the
concentration of reactants is greatest. When the line becomes horizontal, the
reaction has stopped.

A catalyst is a substance that speeds up a chemical reaction, but is not consumed

by the reaction; hence a catalyst can be recovered chemically unchanged at the end
of the reaction it has been used to speed up, or catalyze.
Discussion
In order for chemicals to react, the species involved in any reaction must undergo a
rearrangement of chemical bonds.
The slowest step in the bond rearrangement produces what is termed a transition
state - a chemical species that is neither a reactant nor a product, but is an
intermediate between the two. Energy is required to form the transition state. This
energy is called the Energy of Activation, or Ea.
Reactants with energy lower than Ea cannot pass through the transition state to
react and become products.
A catalyst works by providing a different route, with lower E a, for the reaction. In
any given time interval, the presence of a catalyst allows a greater proportion of

the reactant species to acquire sufficient energy to pass through the transition state
and become products.
Catalysts cannot shift the position of a chemical equilibrium - the forward and
backward reactions are both accelerated so that the equilibrium constant Keq is
unchanged. However, by removing products from the reaction mixture as they
form, the overall rate of product formation can in practice be increased.

Some reactions are slow, such as rusting, and some are fast, like burning.
The rate of reaction depends on the temperature and concentration of the
reactants, and the surface area of any solid reactants.
The rate of reaction can be found by measuring the amount of reactant
used up, or the amount of product formed, in a given time. Catalysts
increase the rate of a reaction without being changed themselves by the
end of the reaction.

Collision theory
Different reactions can happen at different rates. Reactions that occur slowly have a
low rate of reaction. Reactions that happen quickly have a high rate of reaction. For
example, rusting is a slow reaction: it has a low rate of reaction. Burning and
explosions are very fast reactions: they have a high rate of reaction.

Collisions
For a chemical reaction to occur, the reactant particles must collide. But collisions
with too little energy do not produce a reaction.
The particles must have enough energy for the collision to be successful in
producing a reaction.
The rate of reaction depends on the rate of successful collisions between reactant
particles. The more successful collisions there are, the faster the rate of reaction.