INTRODUCTION

The equilibrium constant, K, expresses the relationship between products and reactants of

a reaction at equilibrium with respect to a specific unit. There are two different types of

equilibrium reactions: heterogeneous and homogeneous. A homogeneous equilibrium has

everything present in the same phase. It is one in which all of the reactants and products are

present in a single solution. The usual examples include reactions where everything is a gas, or

everything is present in the same solution.

Figure 1. Heterogenoues vs. Homogenoeous

In chemical reactions, there are reactant and products. It is easy to assume that the

reactants are converted entirely to products following the stoichiometry of the balanced chemical

equation. However, the direction of the reaction is not always going from reactants to products

completely. In reality, many chemical reactions stop far short of 100% conversion of reactants to

products. It is even possible that very little product is actually produced. It may also be the case

that it is impossible to produce any of the assumed products since the reactions may be non-

spontaneous. Both the spontaneity of a reaction (the direction in which it proceeds) and the

extent to which it proceeds are influenced by reaction conditions, such as temperature and

pressure. In addition, the spontaneity of the reaction also depends upon the initial concentrations
of reactants and products. In this experiment, we are interested in learning a very common

mathematical method by which the extent to which a chemical reaction proceeds toward product

formation, or completion, can be expressed.

In all spontaneous chemical reactions the concentrations of the reactants decrease and the

concentrations of the products increase until a steady state condition is reached. At this steady

state or equilibrium condition, the concentrations of the reactants and products no longer change

with time. As noted earlier, this condition of equilibrium may be established well short of 100%

conversion of reactants to products. The equilibrium state is denoted by using instead of a

one-headed arrow, in the balanced equation.

An equilibrium constant Kc which is a numerical ratio to show the relative concentration

of all species is determined. The equilibrium law, sometimes called the law of mass action, says

that in a system at equilibrium the activities of the products raised to the powers of their

stoichiometric coefficients divided by the activities of the reactants raised to the power of their

stoichiometric coefficients is constant at constant temperature. Although this may seem

complicated, the activities can be taken as the concentrations, so for a system at equilibrium:

aA + bB cC+ Dd

The value of Kc is given by the equilibrium law:

Kc = Cc Dd
Aa Bb

All concentrations are taken when the system has reached equilibrium, and so given all

concentrations, Kc can be calculated, or given Kc and all but one of the concentrations, the final

concentration can be calculated. Calculations involving kc require more of an understanding of

reacting moles then actual equilibrium. From the experiment you are to determine the initial

moles of the reactants and products and how many moles are found at equilibrium. You are to

use this information to find the equilibrium constant.

A large Kc means there are high product and low reactant equilibrium concentration. A

small Kc value means there are small equilibrium concentrations of products and large amount of

concentration of reactants. A moderate Kc values which is between 0.001 and 100 is studied in

this experiment. The theory of the Kc is independent of the initial concentrations of reactants and

products is also needed to be proved in this experiment by titrating five different flasks which

containing five different concentration of reactants and products with NaOH.