Wednesday, February 23, 2011

Chapter 16 Homework Exercises

Section 16.2: 13, 16, 18, 20, 22, 23, 26, 27
Section 16.3: 30, 32, 33,
Section 16.4: 35, 38, 39,
Section 16.5: 44, 46(b,c), 48(a,d), 49
Section 16.6: 52, 54, 56, 58, 62, 64, 66(b,c), 68, 70
Section 16.7: 71, 74, 75, 78
Section 16.8: 80, 81, 83, 86
Section 16.10: 92, 93, 96, 98
Section 16.11: 99, 102, 104
Additional Exercises: 106, 108, 111, 113, 116, 120
Integrative Exercises: 122, 123, 124, 128, 129

Monday, February 14, 2011

Friday, February 12th, 2011

Today's lecture set the foundation for the Equilibrium unit and tied together the content from the Kinetics and Equilibrium chapters.

I introduced an experimental simulation found at the following web site:

Reactions and Rates Interactive Simulation


The goal was to convince you of what is happening at the molecular level in chemical reactions, and to show that the equilibrium constants are derived from rate expressions.

The material from the Equilibrium Chapter is vital for Acid-Base chemistry (Chapter 16), Solubility Equilibrium (Chapter 17), and some concepts also show up in the Thermodynamics (Chapter 19), and Electrochemistry (Chapter 20) chapters. Be sure to have a firm grasp on the equilibrium constants as they will show up again throughout the remainder of 122 and main portions of 123.

Wednesday, February 9, 2011

Chapter 15 Homework Problems

Section 15.2: 12, 13, 16, 18, 21, 23, 25
Section 15.5: 27, 30, 32, 34
Section 15.6: 36, 38, 39, 41, 44, 46, 47, 49
Section 15.7: 51, 52, 53, 56
Additional Exercises: 57, 61, 64, 66, 68, 71, 73, 74, 76, 78, 79
Integrative Exercises: 82, 83, 84, 87

Wednesday, February 10th, 2011

At the beginning of class today I gave a brief discussion on the way things run in the chemistry department and tried my best to show you how the grades are assigned at the end of each quarter.

After that, we finished Chapter 14 by wrapping up reaction mechanisms and then talked about catalysis. Be sure to read Chapter 14 to help solidify everything you have been learning up to this point.

I barely scratched the surface with Chemical Equilibrium and we will start that discussion on Friday.

Tuesday, February 8, 2011

Monday, February 7th, 2011

Experiment #17 was discussed at the opening of lecture today. In this experiment you will collect data to determine the rate constant and rate law for a chromium reaction. You will illustrate the principles from Chapter 14 to plot experimental data using Excel. Detailed instructions for this lab can be found on Dr. Zellmer's web-site:

Experiment #17 Lab Instructions

After discussing Lab #17 we continued with reaction mechanisms (Section 14.6). If we are given the rate law and the overall chemical reaction we can propose a reaction mechanisms, which shows the intermediates in a reaction. We can also give the overall reaction and the rate law if we are given all the elementary steps for a reaction mechanism.

On Wednesday I will start class by going over the grades on the first midterm and I will discuss how the grades are assigned, then we will finish up Chapter 14 with transition state theory and catalysis.

Friday, February 4th, 2011

Section 14.4 was finished up by discussing 2nd order, or bimolecular rate laws. Section 14.5 was then discusses as we analyzed the effect temperature has on the rate of a reaction. Collision theory explains how the temperature will influence the rate constants and Arrhenius proposed a way to calculate the rate constant using the activation energy of a particular reaction. At the end of class we briefly discussed reaction mechanisms, which can be found in section 14.6.

Wednesday, February 2nd, 2011

The rate laws from Section 14.3 were discussed and these rate laws are determined from experimental data. Typically a set of experimental data points are given, or you are given graphical data, plotting some sort of concentration relationship vs. time. The overall rate law's were discussed and using experimental results, we were able to calculate the order with respect to each reactant. Section 14.4 then discusses the change of concentration vs. time and we discussed the integrated rate laws for zero and first order reactions.