At the end of this activity, students should be able to explain how and why reaction rates depend on temperature, describe the distribution of molecular energies in gases and liquids, discuss why controlling the temperature of chemical reactions is important, define a catalyst and inhibitors, explain how catalysts work, using the activation energy concept, describe the catalytic activity of metals and elicit information about reaction rates from potential energy diagrams and the MaxwellûBoltzmann distribution curve.

Originally released by Learnetic, 2016.