An Analogy to Help Students Understand Reaction Orders
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[1] Rhode Island College
Rhode Island College
City of Providence, Estados Unidos
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- Localización: Journal of chemical education, ISSN 0021-9584, Vol. 75, Nº 4 (April), 1998, págs. 482-482
- Idioma: inglés
- Texto completo no disponible (Saber más ...)
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Resumen
This article describes a simple analogy to help students understand the concept of the rate law for a chemical reaction. The analogy involves the mathematical relationships between various characteristics of a cube and the length of its edge. These cube properties are the number of vertices, the sum of the edge lengths, the total surface area and the volume. These four properties depend on the edge length to the zero, first, second and third power, respectively. Thus, the four properties are mathematically analogous to zero-, first-, second- and third-order reactions, respectively. This simple analogy is found to be effective in helping students to do rate law problems.
