O. A. Seoud, K. Takashima
Dec 1, 1998
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0
Influential Citations
2
Citations
Journal
Journal of Chemical Education
Abstract
As an experiment for the undergraduate physical chemistry laboratory, the spontaneous hydrolysis of methyl chloroformate has the following attractive features: the reagent is inexpensive, and its stock solution in acetonitrile can be safely handled; the experiment requires very little preparation and can be carried out in a single 4-hour laboratory period; data acquisition can be performed either manually or with a microcomputer. The concentration of one of the reaction products, HCl, is determined either directly by pH measurement or indirectly by conductance measurement or by following the decrease in absorbance of the basic form of the indicator bromophenol blue. The present experiment is used to exemplify the scope and variety of techniques that can be employed for rate measurements and to demonstrate important features of first-order kinetics. These subjects are usually addressed in the specialized literature.