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  Home > JCE Print > Journal of Chemical Education > Issues > 2003  > March  >
In the Laboratory
JCE Classroom Activity
Flipping Pennies and Burning Candles: Adventures in Kinetics
Michael J. Sanger
Department of Chemistry, Middle Tennessee State University, Murfreesboro, TN 37132
Cover
March 2003
Vol. 80 No. 3
p. 304A
Abstract
The purpose of this Activity is to determine whether the processes of flipping pennies and burning candles follow zeroth- or first-order rate laws. In each part, students collect time-amount data (the number of pennies remaining 'heads-up' versus toss number for the penny experiment and the mass of the candle versus total burn time for the candle experiment). In this Activity, students make use of the fact that for a zeroth-order reaction the amount of an object that disappears over time is constant and that for a first-order reaction the proportion of an object that disappears over time is constant. This Activity is inquiry-based and is intended to introduce the concept of reaction orders and provide students with their first experiences in determining reaction orders and performing simple kinetics calculations. A similar experiment was recently published in the Journal of Chemical Education,but it requires access to a set of classroom computers; this Activity was written as an alternative that only requires students to do simple calculations.
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A sample set of data is available.
*  Contents JCE2003p0304AW.xls (Microsoft Excel)
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*  Citation
 Sanger, Michael J. J. Chem. Educ. 2003 80 304A.
*  Keywords
 General Chemistry; Introductory / High School Chemistry; Kinetics; Laboratory Instruction
*  History
 Created:
Last Updated:		 February 6, 2003
February 28, 2005
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