A chemist investigates the decomposition of aqueous hydrogen peroxide and proposes…
CHEMISTRY · Multi-part · CBSE · Chemistry · Chemical Kinetics · Chemical Kinetics
Problem
A chemist investigates the decomposition of aqueous hydrogen peroxide and proposes the following two-step sequence of elementary reactions carried out in the presence of iodide ion.
Step 1 I−+H2O2⟶IO−+H2O
Step 2 IO−+H2O2⟶I−+H2O+O2
The chemist records every chemical species that appears in either elementary step:
H2O2,H2O,O2,I−,IO−.
(a) Write the overall balanced chemical equation implied by the two elementary steps.
(b) For each species listed in the stimulus, classify it as a reactant, product, intermediate, or catalyst. Present your answer in a table with two columns ("Species" and "Classification").
(c) Explain the criteria you used to assign each species to its classification, making explicit reference to how the species behaves across the sequence of elementary reactions.