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Ch.14 - Chemical Kinetics

Chapter 14, Problem 18c

(c) As a reaction proceeds, does the instantaneous reaction rate increase or decrease?

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Hey everyone today, we're being asked to find how the instantaneous rate of reaction changes with time. Now. Before getting into the instantaneous rate, we need to just clarify a few things. When we're talking about a reaction. We essentially mean a reactant or a few reactant react with each other to form a product. However, implicitly, what is implied is that the concentration of any reactant, let's just take a will decrease over time will decrease as time progresses due to the fact that it will be reacting with substrate B in this case to form the final product. C. So with that in mind, let's go ahead and take a graph that shows the changing subject concentration over time or changing a over time. So as we can see here the concentration of A or react and a decreases as time increases. So there's a negative correlation. However, the instantaneous rate of change of a chemical reaction is the slope of the tangent at any point on the concentration versus time curve. So on the picture, we can actually see right here, there's one tangent line and there's another tangent line right here and these are just two arbitrary tangent lines. I could draw one anywhere. For example, there could also be one here. But the point being is that as the slope flattens out of the concentration versus time curve, so does the tangent slope as time progresses and since the slope changes over time it's decreasing, that means the instantaneous rate and let's write this out. The instantaneous rate in rate of reaction change decreases. It decreases with time. I hope this helps, and I look forward to seeing you all in the next one.