Question

A student claims that if she wanted to make a solution quickly, she should use small pellets instead of powder along with heating and stirring. Do you agree or disagree with the student's claim? Answer using CER format. PLS HELP I’m a little confused and don’t know what to put.

Answer 1

Answer:

I disagree with the student's claim

Explanation:

From basic chemistry, the rate of chemical reaction increases with an increased surface area.

This simply means that a powdered substance will react faster than a small pellet of the same substance.

Let us break this down further. The pellet has a smaller exposed surface per grain to the solvent, here is how. Imagine the powdered substance bunched up together to make the small pellet, grains at the center of the pellet is blocked by other grains around it, and will take time before it comes in contact with the solvent. For the powdered grains, each grain has a surface independently exposed to the solvent and can easily come in contact with the solvent, taking less time to react with the solvent.

Technically, a powdered substance has more exposed surface area and logically will take a shorter time for the reaction to be complete.