Abstract:

The purpose of this lab is to determine the order of reaction in a chemical reaction and determine how fast is "fast" for a reaction. This aspect of chemistry is called kinetics. Kinetics deals with how quickly or how slowly a reaction takes place. This will be done by observing the concentration of crystal violet solution in a reaction with sodium hydroxide and deionized water using a spectroscopic method and applying Beer's law. The rate of a reaction depends on the concentration of the reactants and can be expressed as the "rate law." The rate law for a chemical reaction relates the disappearance of reactants or the appearance of the products to the concentration of the reactants. The rate of reaction is then measured by monitoring the change of the concentration of one of the reactants or products. Varying concentrations of the crystal violet solution and sodium hydroxide will be placed in cuvettes and their absorption over time will be observed.This results in a graph of the time versus concentration where the slope will be used to determine the rate constant. This is the initial rate method. These results are important because if there is any mistake in the calculations, the reaction rates will be wrong.