What is surface area and how does it affect chemical reactions?

Question

chemical reaction occurs when 2 substances, because of their molecular structure, produce a chemical change when they come into contact.

Answer 1

Surface area is the area of the surface of the substance. When we break a piece into two the total surface area increases, because the broken area provides additional surface.
Breaking further will increase the surface area further.
Chemicals in fine powder form will have much more surface area than in the form of chunks.
More surface area means more opportunity to come into contact and faster rate of chemical reaction.

Answer 2

Surface area is just that area. Length x width.

The rate of chemical reactions depends strongly on surface area because the reaction occurs when the reactant molecules come in contact with sufficient energy to react. The larger the surface area the greater likely hood this will happen. Its just a matter of statistics.

Answer 3

Think about steel ... which would rust faster, a sheet of steel like
foil, or a all of steel?

The sheet of steel has maximum surface area, and the ball
of steel has the minimum surface area.

For steel to rust, oxygen must get to it an react with it ...
for a ball this is very difficult, but for a foil it is very easy.

Surface area allows the reactants in a chemical reaction
to interact with each other .. the ultimate surface area is
in a liquid of gas because the atoms are free and able
to react to the maximum.

Answer 4

The greater the surface area, the greater the room for the chemical reactions to occur.

Answer 5

Well in chemistry there is this thing called collision theory which states that as surface area of a reactant substance is increased, the rate of reaction is also increased. This is simply due to the fact that more of the reactant substance (e.g.Zinc) is exposed to collisions. If you think about it, when you have a lump of zinc, all the particle are clumped together, with only the outer ones exposed to reactions. If you break this clump down, then there are smaller groups of particles bunched together and more particles are exposed to reactions (these are the particles that ere onthesee inner layer of the larger clump but now have been broken apart and can collide)