Design an experiment to determine the relationship between reaction rates and temperature?

Answer 1

Obviously your teacher wants to you to apply information you've learned (or not learned) in class. So instead of thinking for you, I will give you the general information that may help you along the way (what you should have been learning in class).

First things first: yes, temperature is a factor in the rate of reactions. As you may think, high temperatures will speed up the reactions, and low temperatures will slow them down. Part of the reason lies in the speed of particles, and the other lies in the geometry of molecules.

Temperature measures the average speed of particles, so the higher the temperature, the faster particles move. Heat is the determining factor in the speed of particles; added heat will add kinetic energy - the particles move faster, the temperature goes up. So now that we have established that high temperatures will cause high movement of particles, we can take a look at what that does.

Molecules will only combine if two hit each other in the correct way, and if they hit hard enough. If atom A on molecule one wants to split off and bond with atom B of molecule two, then they can only do this if they in fact come into contact. A bump between molecule A and B that isn't correctly aligned will not cause any change. A change will also not occur even if they're properly aligned, but don't hit hard enough.

But this all changes when the temperature goes up. Because the molecules are moving faster, they will bump into each other more often, increasing the chance that they will align properly. In addition, the high kinetic energy ensures that the molecules will bump together hard enough and cause a reaction.

So there you go, increased temperatures will increase the rate of reaction. Now designing an experiment doesn't seem too difficult.