Investigating Factors that Affect the Rate of Reaction Between marble and Dilute Hydrochloric Acid

Investigating Factors that Affect the Rate of Reaction Between marble and Dilute Hydrochloric Acid

The local Council are concerned about the effect of acid rain on the

marble statues in the local park. Investigate a factor that affects

the rate of reaction between marble (calcium carbonate) and dilute

hydrochloric acid.

There are three main factors that affect the rate of reaction. These

are:

Particle size

Concentration

Temperature

With investigating any of these, there are slight problems which make

them not as reliable as they could be.

With particle size, it is extremely difficult to get control of the

sizes, e.g. large, small, medium. I will not be investigating this as

it is very unreliable.

With concentration, even though it is easy to control by measured

dilution, the room temperature affects the reaction rate, and is hard

to control. If the experiment needs two lessons to be completed, the

room temperature is unlikely to be the same, therefore affecting the

results and making it unreliable. I will not be investigating

concentration either.

I will be choosing to do investigate temperature. It is difficult to

get fine control without water baths or thermostatic heaters, so the

results will be unreliable because of this. However, I plan to tackle

this problem by putting the marble and acid on the tripod as soon as

the temperature we are trying to investigate is reached, and if the

temperature falls I will put the Bunsen burner under the tripod again

to try and reach the temperature.

Prediction

----------

The collision theory is that for a reaction to occur, particles must

collide with each other. An increase in the temperature is an increase

in the energy of the particles, and anything that increases the

energy, and therefore the frequency of the collisions, will cause an

increase of the reaction rate.

I predict that when I increase the temperature, the rate of reaction

will increase. This is because when I increase the temperature I am