Hello Everyone! Welcome back to another post on Teach Me to Science about General Chemistry 2. Today's post is about Rates.
Why you should understand Rates: Rates are a key concept of reaction kinetics. We can't make a reaction go faster or slower if we don't know what a rate is.
Key Ideas
- What is a rate
- Writing Rate expressions
What is a rate
A rate is a change in concentration over time. There are several types of rates including instantaneous rates and average.
Instantaneous rates describe the change in concentration at a specific point in the reaction.
Average rates describe the average change in concentration over the entire reaction progress.
Writing Rate Expressions
Rate expressions describe the relationships between the rates of each of the reactants or products in the reaction. The rate expression can be described by writing the change in the concentration of one particular reactant over the change in time multiplied by one over the coefficient. The whole term is negative if the chemical is a reactant. This is because reactants are used up during a reaction. The whole term is positive if the chemical is a product. This is because the products are created during a reaction.
Each chemical has its own term in the rate expression. To the right, I've written an example reaction and its corresponding rate expression.
Try and write out the rate expression for the reaction below. I've solved this problem in the video I've attached below.
I hope you've found this post on rates helpful. If you have any questions feel free to comment on this post, email me, or comment on the Youtube Video I've attached below.
- Saren
