How Does Temperature Affect The Rate Of Reaction

Investigating the effect of temperature on the rate of reaction

By: Tom Beil
Words:
Year: 10
Date:
School: Toowoomba Grammar School

Introduction The rate of reaction is the speed in which a chemical reaction occurs. This can be appealed in medicine today for example some vaccines need to be stored under a certain temperature or they will react will each other and become unusable. Another example is Cryonics; Cryonics is the preservation of people most commonly under -196 degrease. The body is cooled so that no chemical reactions can occur inside the body. This allows the body to stay preserved for however long the temperature is kept at a low enough temperature.
The aim of this experiment is to discover the effects of temperature on the rate of reaction. This will be achieved by an experiment

The collision theory is based on an assumption which states that for a reaction to occur the reactants need to collide with each other. It is commonly used to predict the rate of reaction between chemicals especially when gasses are produced as a product. This is appropriate to our experiment because it helps us understand how temperature affects the collision of the two participants.
Another important theoretical concept that is important to our investigation is activation energy. Activation energy is the Least possible amount of energy required to stimulate the atoms/molecules into reacting with each other. In the experiment the effects of temperature on the speed which activation energy will be seen, for example the hotter the solution the faster it reached which is because the heat made the activation energy occur much faster. This theory is also demonstrated with the colder solution, the colder solution slowed the activation energy so it takes longer for the reaction to