Preview - Introduction To Netlogo: Rusting & Rates Of Reaction

Exploration 4

To mimic what happens in reality, when rust flakes off the surface of iron or steel, do the following.

  1. Set the IRON-BLOCK-GEOMETRY to 9x9 Middle Box

  2. Press the SETUP button

  3. Press the GO/STOP

 

Let the model run until most of the edges are covered in rust.

3. Press the USE MOUSE button (it will stay black when pressed once)

4. Set the MOUSE-INTERACTION chooser to [drag away rust]

5. Then, using your mouse, left click and hold the button down when you point at a rust molecule. With the button on the mouse pressed down, drag the rust molecule away from the iron block. 

In reality, the rusting process does not occur very quickly. In the model, the current setting for ACTIVATION-ENERGY of 400 is too low. The low setting of this slider is to help show you how rust would react if it required a small amount of kinetic energy to occur. 

Questions

Please answer the questions below.

Even if you drag all the rust away from the iron block to expose more iron to the oxygen, in theory, the block of 81 iron atoms would never be completely converted into rust molecules. What in the model would explain why?

What happens to the reaction if you lower the activation energy?

Notes

These notes will appear on every page in this lesson so feel free to put anything here you'd like to keep track of.