A chemist observes that increasing the temperature of a gas-phase reaction mixture by only 10 K nearly doubles the experimentally measured initial rate, even though the total pressure and reactant concentrations remain essentially unchanged.
(a) Describe qualitatively how the Maxwell–Boltzmann distribution of molecular energies changes when the temperature of a gas is increased.
(b) Explain, in terms of the energy distribution and activation energy, why a modest temperature rise can lead to a disproportionately large increase in reaction rate.
(c) The fraction of correctly oriented collisions is unchanged by the temperature increase. Discuss the implications of this observation for identifying the principal factor responsible for the rate enhancement.