Transcript for:
Unit 8.4: Concentration Effects on Reaction Rates

Another way to increase or decrease the rate of a reaction is to change the concentration of reactant molecules. If the concentration of reactants is increased, there are more particles in the same volume or space as before. This means there will be way more collisions occurring every second, as you're effectively squeezing more particles into the same area. Think about... small children running around in a room. The more children you put in the room, the more collisions there are going to be between them. Now a really key point here is that if the temperature of the system is kept the same, then all the particles will still have the same average kinetic energy. Meaning the proportion of collisions that end up being successful, compared to all the collisions occurring each second, will stay the same. It's just that because more collisions overall are happening every second, there will also end up being a greater frequency of successful collisions as a result.