Submitted by Jack Eichler / University of California, Riverside on Thu, 01/16/2020 - 14:55
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Description

This is a flipped classroom module that covers the concepts of time-integrated rate laws. This activity is designed to be done at the end of the typical second quarter/second semester general chemistry kinetics unit. Students will be expected to have learned the following concepts prior to completing this activity:

a) how instantaneous rates of reactions are determined by measuring changes in concentration of reactants and/or products at the beginning of the reaction;

b) understanding basic rate laws and how rate laws are determined for a chemical reaction using instantaneous rates;

c) understanding why the rates of reactions slow down as the time of reaction increases.

Acknowledgement: This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. 1504989. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.

 

Learning Goals

Students are expected to achieve the following learning goals:

a) conceptually understand how time-integrated rates laws can be used to describe the kinetics of a chemical reaction;

b) use time-integrated rate laws to determine the rate constant for a first or second order reaction;

c) use time-integrated rate laws to determine the half-life of a decomposition reaction;

d) use Excel to plot time-integrated rate laws and generate best-fit linear trend lines.

 

Equipment needs

Students need a laptop or tablet device capable of operating a spreadsheet/graphing program. 

Implementation Notes

See attached instructor notes. 

Time Required
50-80 minutes

Evaluation

Evaluation Methods

1) Performance on the pre-lecture online quiz

2) Performance on the in-class activity (clicker scores or hand-graded worksheet)

 

Evaluation Results

Students generally score on average 70% or higher on the pre-lecdure quiz, and on average 70% or more of students correctly answer the in-class clicker questions. 

Creative Commons License
Attribution, Non-Commercial, Share Alike CC BY-NC-SA
Sarah K. St. Angelo / Dickinson College

I've used this in a couple of classes and really like the application of cancer drugs for an example in kinetics. My question is that some of my students used the time = 0 initial concentrations and got different answers than when they used the data that doesn't include t = 0 concentrations. Maybe just something to watch out for--but wondering if you have an explanation for your students?

Thu, 06/22/2023 - 10:20 Permalink