In a second-order reaction, the rate of the reaction is proportional to the square of the concentration of the reactant. This can be seen in the differential rate law which shows how the rate of a reaction depends on the … Read more
In first-order reactions, the rate of the reaction is directly/linearly proportional to the concentration of the reactant. This can be seen in the differential rate law which shows how the rate of a reaction depends on the concentration of the … Read more
Carbon dating is a technique that measures the age of ancient objects containing carbon. The 14C isotope of carbon is radioactive and is only accumulated in living organisms. Once dead, the amount of 14C, and thus its ratio … Read more
In these practice problems, we will work on the kinetics of radioactive reactions. Most often, in chemistry at least, you will be asked to determine the activity, quantity, the decay rate of radioactive isotopes, the time required to drop the … Read more
Despite some fundamental differences between chemical and nuclear reactions, they both share a common feature which you heard so many times – the equation must be balanced! For chemical reactions, the equation is balanced by equalizing the number of given … Read more
In all the chapters we covered so far, we dealt with chemical reactions where the changes occur as a result of electron redistributions. For example, the reaction between sodium metal and chlorine gas is an example of a redox reaction … Read more
In the previous post, we talked about ionization energy which is the amount of energy required to remove an electron from the isolated neutral atom in the gaseous state. During the ionization, a neutral atom was becoming a … Read more
When discussing the Bohr’s model of the hydrogen atom, we saw that absorbing light with sufficient energy moves the electron to a higher energy level, and when it falls back to a lower energy level, light is emitted as energy is lost. Next, … Read more
The energy of a photon, which is the energy of the light, can be calculated using the following two formulas: The second formula is derived from the first by using the relationship between the frequency (ν), wavelength (λ), … Read more
Energy and Atomic Structure Remember, when discussing the Bohr’s model for the hydrogen atom, we saw that there are orbits with distinct energies that the electron can occupy. Each orbit has its own constant radius which is directly related to … Read more
