Question

Exercise 5 (Linear Regression). The hydrolysis of cellulose in dilute acid solution follows first order reaction kinetics. As a result, the rate constant for the hydrolysis can be determined by plotting the natural logarithm of the amount of cellulose in the reaction mixture versus the elapsed reaction time. The rate constant is equal to the negative of the slope value of this line. What are the units of the rate constant? Use the reaction data given in Table 3 to make the appropriate plot and to calculate the hydrolysis rate constant and its uncertainty at the 95 % confidence level.

Table 3: Data for hydrolysis of cellulose.

Time / min	Celulose / g	Time / min	Celulose / g
5	0.671	25	0.423
10	0.625	30	0.349
15	0.481	35	0.353
20	0.459

Answer 1

Slope is -0.0256

thus rate constant = 0.0256 min^-1

unit of rate constant is min^-1