Investigating the reaction between Hydrochloric acid and marble chippings.

Authors Avatar

For my Chemistry Coursework I will be investigating the reaction between Hydrochloric acid and marble chippings. The marble that I will be testing will be from a gravestone at St Mary’s Church, Ewell.

The two factors that I will investigate will be concentration and pressure. I have chosen these because they will give me solid and reliable results.

I have done some additional research to see what other factors affect the rate of reaction:

Temperature:  The higher the temperature the more energy the particles have causing more collisions. The more collisions there are the faster the reaction.

Concentration: The higher the concentrations of hydrochloric acid the more particles there are affect the amount of collisions. There are more collisions increasing the rate of reaction.

Surface Area:  when there is a greater surface area of solid, collisions happen more frequently. The more collisions there are the faster the reaction.

Catalyst: The catalyst increases the rate of reaction by creating more energy for the particles making them collide more with each other.

As this research shows concentration is a good area to investigate.

The reaction between hydrochloric acid and marble chippings is:

CaCO3  + 2HCl        CaCl2  + H2O + CO2

Collision Theory

As the temperature rises, the average Speed of particles increases.  At high temperatures, there are more collisions per second and this results in an increase in the rate of reaction.  A reaction will only occur if the colliding particles possesses more than a certain minimum amount of energy.  This minimum energy for a reaction to occur is known as the activation energy.  EA.  The activation energy enables chemical bonds to stretch and break the rearrangements of the atom, ions and electrons to occur as the reaction proceeds.  As a result of the temperature rising, the particles in the marble chips receive more energy and start colliding with each other to increase the reaction, the rate of it simply depends on how hard and often the reacting particles collide with each other.  The energy (gas (carbon dioxide)) given off becomes more as the temperature rises.

Join now!

Apparatus

  • 20cm3 of hydrochloric acid

  • 1 gram of marble chippings
  • Side arm test tube
  • Rubber bung
  • Clamp Stand
  • Measuring Syringe
  • Measuring cylinder

Preliminary Experiment

I did a preliminary experiment so that I could find out the relevant information for me to use the appropriate concentration of the solution and the correct apparatus. During my experiment many things went wrong, for example the concentration of hydrochloric acid was too low and I had too many readings. On the other hand I used a too strong solution and I didn’t get many readings at all. To ...

This is a preview of the whole essay