Question

Which statement best describes the relationship between activation energy and rate of reaction?

Answer 1

B. Decreasing the activation energy can increase the rate of a reaction.

Further explanation

• According to the theory of transition states, the reactants must reach a transition state before forming a product.
• The minimum kinetic energy that reactant particles must have to reach the transition state is called activation energy.
• If the energy produced from the collision of reactant particles does not reach the activation energy, the reaction will not produce a product.
• The lower the activation energy, the easier the reactant particles reach the transition state, the faster the reaction.

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Notes

• If we want to increase the reaction rate, one of the factors that influence is the addition of a positive catalyst. Positive catalysts can reduce the activation energy so that many particles have kinetic energy above the activation energy.
• When the activation energy is low, the collision between the reacting particles will have enough energy to get past the activation energy barrier and produce a product.  
• The attached figure shows the energy diagram for an exothermic chemical reaction.  
• Higher curves indicate the path of the catalyst-free reaction.  
• The lower curve shows the reaction path employing the catalyst.  
• It should be observed that catalyzed reactions have lower activation energies than uncatalyzed reactions.
• As a whole, the catalyst accelerates the reaction rate by decreasing the activation energy of a reaction at a certain temperature.

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Answer 2

The activation energy is a barrier which the reactant molecules need to cross in order to complete the chemical reaction. The less the activation energy, the easier it will be for reactants to convert into product and therefore, the rate of reaction would increase.

Further Explanation:

The amount of energy required by the system for the chemical reaction to take place is called activation energy. For a chemical reaction to occur, the chemical bonds of the reactant molecules need to be broken down in order to the product by making new bonds. For this purpose, the reactants are first converted into a less stable state which is the transition state. The molecules in the transition state have high energy compared to the ones in the product state. Therefore, in order to get converted into a product, the transition state molecule must cross the high energy barrier by adding some energy into it, called the activation energy. The activation energy helps the intermediate state of a molecule to form the product.

In particular, the activation energy source is heat, which is absorbed by the reactant molecules from the surroundings. The absorption of heat energy speeds up the activity of reactant molecules which further enhances their frequency and collision force. This results in the breaking of bonds in the reactant molecules and absorption of enough energy so as to complete the product formation.

The rate of reaction and activation energy are closely related. As the activation energy increases, it becomes difficult for the molecules to cross such a high energy barrier and the chemical reaction becomes slow. This implies that a high barrier of energy would allow only fewer molecules to make it to the reaction. Such reactions are facilitated by a catalyst that speeds up the reaction rate by lowering the energy of activation. Therefore, lower activation energy would favor an increased rate of reaction as more and more molecules can cross the energy barrier.

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Answer Details:

Grade: High School

Chapter: Activation energy

Subject: Biology

Keywords:

Chemical reaction, reactant molecules, product, transition state, activation energy, energy barrier, rate of reaction, catalyst, intermediate state, heat energy.SA.