Could you list a few ways that would decrease the rate of a chemical reaction?
1 Answer
Think about how you would increase the rate of a reaction, then apply the opposite.
Explanation:
If you apply heat to the reaction, the rate increases. So what occurs when you cool the reaction?
If a high concentration of reactants increases the rate, what happens when you lower the concentration?
If you grind reactants up to give them a greater surface area, they'll react faster. What happens when you don't grind them up?
If you're performing a chemical reaction with gases, you'd increase the pressure to maximize the number of molecular collisions; if you drop the pressure, what happens?
Finally, catalysts are special chemicals that are added to reactions to increase the rate without being consumed themselves in the reaction; they work by lowering the activation energy needed for the transition to occur. If you don't use a catalyst, what happens?
As you can see, the answers to these questions are all the same - if you do the opposite of what increases the rate of a reaction, you're going to decrease the rate.
Does this make sense?
