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Introduction

Amin Bedri Science Coursework Rates of Reaction Investigation: The rate of reaction between magnesium and sulphuric acid. My Planning The task that was set to me was to investigate how much gas is produced when magnesium and sulphuric acid react. I am positive that I will find a connection between the concentration of the acid and the amount of gas produced. I am going to record five sets of results, which will be recorded until the reaction becomes dormant. The results will then be interpreted into a graph. This will help show my conclusion by using a scatter graph by plotting the results and drawing a line of best fit. The reaction between sulphuric acid and the magnesium ribbon, the sulphuric acid will dissolve the magnesium and produce hydrogen gas. All chemical reactions include reactants which when mixed may produce a chemical reaction which will make products. In my experiment the reactants are sulphuric acid and magnesium ribbon. The chemical reaction takes place when the magnesium ribbon is dropped into the sulphuric acid. The rate of reaction between the magnesium and the sulphuric acid may increase or decrease depending on certain factors. The factors that may determine this are: temperature of the sulphuric acid, mass of the magnesium ribbon used, concentration of the sulphuric acid, surface area of the magnesium ribbon used. ...read more.

Middle

* The amount of acid and water used to react with the magnesium strip must always add up to 20 cm3 Plan The experiment will be done using the equipment shown above. The acid will be measured in a measuring cylinder and then put into a conical flask. The water (if necessary) will be measured in the same way and added to the same conical flask as the acid. The burette will hold 50ml of water. I am going to record how the amount of water left the deduct that from 50. I am doing this because this will find out how much hydrogen has been produced. When I have set the burette up in a clamp (see diagram), I will cut a piece of magnesium ribbon to 5cm long. To make sure that all the gas given off is collected, I will ask some-one else to start the stop-watch as soon as the magnesium ribbon is in and the bung to the cork on the top. I will then time for 3 minutes and take a reading of the gas every 30 seconds. I will use six concentrations for this experiment and they will be: 20ml acid : 0ml water 18ml acid : 2ml water 17ml acid : 3ml water 15ml acid : 5ml water 13ml acid : 7ml water 10ml acid : 10ml water Prediction I predict that the higher the concentration of the acid, the faster the rate of reaction will be. ...read more.

Conclusion

In the reaction, when the magnesium hit the acid, it fizzed and produced many bubbles it was silver in colour. The activation energy of a particle gets higher with heat, the particles which have to have the activation energy are those particles which are moving. In this case it is the sulphuric acid particles that have to have the activation energy because they are the ones that are moving and bombarding the magnesium particles to produce magnesium chloride. The graphs indicate that the in proportion to the amount of sulphuric acid used, with the reaction with magnesium, it affects the quantity of hydrogen produced. The more acid the more hydrogen. All the other points are extremely close to the line verifying that my results are precise. Evaluation The anomalous results are when 17ml acid and 3ml of water were used. After 30 seconds it dropped from 41.5 to 27.5 but this seems very out of the ordinary to drop so dramatically. This may be due to the fact that I may have not connected the tubes properly or I may not have recorded the results accurately. But over all the experiment I felt went well. The results are reliable and are sufficient to draw my conclusions. But next time to improve my results I would conduct two sets of experiments and make an average out of the two experiments. ...read more.

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