Developing a Safe and Versatile Chemiluminescence Demonstration for Studying Reaction Kinetics

Although chemiluminescent reactions are generally used in demonstrations to pique students' interest in chemistry, they may serve as a great tool for studying reaction kinetics. In this paper, we briefly present an overview of the basics of chemiluminescent kinetics and introduce a safe and robust formulation for making chemiluminescent reactions using citrate based solvents suitable for chemical studies. The rates of chemiluminescence reactions were quantified using open-source Arduino-development-board projects and ubiquitous photoresistor-based sensors. The simple and versatile formulation as well as the data logging proposed in this work provide instructors with an easy, interesting, and cost-effective tool for teaching reaction kinetics at room temperature. The experiment can be tuned to accommodate for time constraints and various levels of complexity in postprocessing. On the basis of the proposed formulation, a procedure for model demonstration has been described. The proposed methodology was supported by providing an example of data collected and postprocessed by first-year undergraduate students. This work will contribute to improving the pedagogical applications of chemiluminescent reactions.