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Flipping Pennies and Burning Candles: Adventures in Kinetics

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Michael J. Sanger

Department of Chemistry, Middle Tennessee State University, Murfreesboro, TN 37132

J. Chem. Educ., 2003, 80 (3), p 304A

DOI: 10.1021/ed080p304A

Publication Date (Web): March 1, 2003

Abstract

The purpose of this Activity is to determine whether the processes of flipping pennies and burning candles follow zeroth- or first-order rate laws. In each part, students collect time-amount data (the number of pennies remaining 'heads-up' versus toss number for the penny experiment and the mass of the candle versus total burn time for the candle experiment). In this Activity, students make use of the fact that for a zeroth-order reaction the amount of an object that disappears over time is constant and that for a first-order reaction the proportion of an object that disappears over time is constant. This Activity is inquiry-based and is intended to introduce the concept of reaction orders and provide students with their first experiences in determining reaction orders and performing simple kinetics calculations. A similar experiment was recently published in the Journal of Chemical Education,but it requires access to a set of classroom computers; this Activity was written as an alternative that only requires students to do simple calculations.

Keywords (Audience):

First-Year Undergraduate / General

Keywords (Domain):

Laboratory Instruction

Keywords (Feature):

JCE Classroom Activity

Keywords (Pedagogy):

Hands-On Learning / Manipulatives

Keywords (Subject):

Kinetics

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This article has been cited by 1 ACS Journal articles (1 most recent appear below).

Visualizing the Transition State: A Hands-on Approach to the Arrhenius Equation
Matthew S. Swanson , Deborah K. Sayers , Thomas S. Kuntzleman
Journal of Chemical Education2007 84 (11), 1776
- Visualizing the Transition State: A Hands-on Approach to the Arrhenius Equation
  Matthew S. Swanson , Deborah K. Sayers , Thomas S. Kuntzleman
  Journal of Chemical Education2007 84 (11), 1776
  An exercise is presented in which the kinetics of the irreversible "reaction" of pennies in the heads-up state to pennies in the tails-up state is simulated by a hands-on, Monte Carlo approach. In addition, the exercise incorporates a second simulation in ...
  Abstract | Hi-Res PDF | PDF w/ Links