What Factors Increase the Rate of a Chemical Reaction?

Factors That Will Increase the Rate of a Chemical Reaction

For a reaction to occur, the reactants must hit each other with sufficient speed and in a proper orientation. Sufficient speed is related to the activation energy of the reaction.

To increase the rate of reaction there must be a factor that causes more collisions of reactant molecules or causes more molecules to have energies greater than the activation energy, so as long as there’s a factor that’s either causing more collisions or causing more molecules to have energies greater than the activation energy, then the rate of reaction is going to increase.

I want to take a look at several factors that help to increase the rate of reaction. The first is increasing the concentration of reactant molecules. What happens when the concentration of reactant molecules is increased is it crowds them closer together in the same volume, so it increases the frequency of collisions because when you have more things within the same amount of space they’re more likely to bump into one another, so that increases the rate of reaction.

The second way to go about this is to increase temperature. The warmer something is the more it moves around, so when you’re increasing temperature, you’re increasing the average kinetic energy or the speed of the reactant molecules, so more collisions are going to occur and there’s going to be more molecules with energies greater than the activation energy.

The third way to go about this is to decrease particle size. Now when you decrease particle size, you’re increasing the surface area which allows for more collisions.

The fourth way that I want to go over is by increasing pressure. When you increase pressure, it forces the reactant molecules closer together and thereby increases the frequency of collisions.

Again, for a reaction to occur the reactants must hit each other with sufficient speed and in a proper orientation, so these are four ways in order to speed up the reaction process.

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by Mometrix Test Preparation | This Page Last Updated: March 2, 2022