Heat It Up

Activation energy and temperature

An interactive lesson with 6 steps, about 5 minutes: you predict, drag and solve, with instant feedback on every answer. It runs in your browser and needs JavaScript.

What you’ll learn

• Only collisions with energy above Eₐ react.
• Heating fattens the high-energy tail: rates rise exponentially (Arrhenius).
• Near room temperature, rates often double for each 10 °C.

Steps

1. Hard enough to react
2. The energetic few
3. From 20 °C to 40 °C
4. Ten times faster
5. Why fridges work
6. Striking a match