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The problem asks us to determine the fraction of diethyl ether remaining after a specific time, given its half-life for a first-order decomposition reaction.
Determine the rate constant () for the first-order reaction.
For a first-order reaction, the half-life () is the time required for the concentration of a reactant to decrease to half of its initial value. This is a constant value for a given first-order reaction and is related to the rate constant () by the following equation:
Here, is the natural logarithm of 2, which is approximately 0.6931.
We are given the half-life . To find the rate constant , we rearrange the formula:Substitute the given value:
This value of represents how quickly the reaction proceeds.
Calculate the fraction of diethyl ether remaining after .
To find the amount of reactant remaining after a certain time, we use the integrated rate law for a first-order reaction. This equation relates the concentration of the reactant at time () to its initial concentration (), the rate constant (), and the time ():
The term represents the fraction of the reactant remaining at time . To solve for this fraction, we need to remove the natural logarithm (). We do this by taking the exponential (base ) of both sides of the equation:
This simplifies to:
Now, we substitute the calculated rate constant and the given time :
First, calculate the product in the exponent:
So, the equation becomes:
Finally, calculate the value:
This means that after , approximately 0.1416 (or ) of the initial diethyl ether remains.
Note: The value 0.750 was not used in these calculations. The constant used in the half-life formula is .
The fraction of diethyl ether remaining after is approximately .
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