Cake :: Help & Info
Cake Summary
Cake simulates a reaction, the oxidation of carbon monoxide, catalyzed by platinum. The simplified reaction is the following:
2CO(g) + O2(g) ⇌ 2CO2(g)
(Though the reaction is exothermic, the heat is absorbed by the platinum catalyst.)
There are two teams in Cake. Each team is trying to get the reaction's equalibrium position to favor either the products or reactants. The "co2" team's goal is to get the reaction to favor products; the "co"'s, to favor reactants.
Cake actually supports any number of these reactions happening at the same time. Each reaction is completely seperate from all the others. This means that the Cake system supports many different games (reactions) at once. Each reaction is identified by a unique ID and a name, whose sole purpose is to help you see which reaction is the one you want to see.
Rules
Cake is turn-based. On each turn, both teams have the oppurtunity to be asked a question (with 5 different difficulties.) If that team gets the question correct, they gain points. Harder questions are, of course, worth more points. Each team can then use those points to change the reaction in one way per turn — adding or removing O2 present, increasing or decreasing the volume of the container, or raising or lowering the temperature. (Each team can thus affect concentration and pressure, which is just the sum of the concentration of the reactants and products.) After both teams submit their changes (or decline to change anything), the reaction "runs" for a simulated picosecond (10-12 seconds).
The only use for points is to change the reaction. They do not determine who wins the game in any way. Of course, if you never get any points, it's unlikely that you'll win, because you won't be able to do anything.
The CO team wins the game if the concentration of CO is at least 2M higher than the concentration of CO2 and if the magnitude of the rate of the forward reaction is larger than the magnitude of the rate of the reverse reaction by no more than a factor of 104.
The CO2 team wins the game if the concentration of CO2 is at least 2M higher than the concentration of CO and if the magnitude of the rate of the forward reaction is larger than the magnitude of the rate of the reverse reaction by at least 104.
The following information may be useful to you.
Constants
| Initial Reaction Conditions | |
|---|---|
| Moles Oxygen | 10.5 |
| Moles Carbon Dioxide | 1.25 * 10-11 |
| Moles Carbon Monoxide | 10.5 |
| Temperature (Kelvin) | 1200 |
| Volume (L) | 2 |
| Limits | |
| Minimum Oxygen | 0 mol |
| Minimum Volume | 0 L |
| Minimum Temperature | 401 K |
| Maximum Temperature | 1999 K |
| Point gains | |
| For leve-1 questions | 1 pt |
| For leve-2 questions | 2 pt |
| For leve-3 questions | 3 pt |
| For leve-4 questions | 4 pt |
| For leve-5 questions | 5 pt |
| Change costs | |
| Adding/removing oxygen | .5 mol/pt |
| Raising/lowering temperature | 10 K/pt |
| Increasing/descreasing volume | 100 mL/pt |
More information about the simulation is available on the Simulator Documentation page.
About Cake
Cake is a game designed to help students review a high-school level Chemistry course. Its focus is on two main areas: reaction rates and dynamic equilibria of reversible chemical reactions. Cake was written by three students— Alex Linden, Jonathan Sailor, and Saul Tobin— in a little under a week.
Cake is comprised of a reaction simulator for the oxidation reaction, written in C++ (though it might as well have been C), a question generation module, also written in C++, a web-app using those components written in Perl/Mason, and SWIG-generated C++/Perl glue.
If you have questions, don't hesitate to ask one of the authors.
Cake is copyright © 2005, Alex Linden, Jonathan Sailor, and Saul Tobin. Cake may be used freely by the Belmont High School, in Belmont, MA, excluding redistribution of source files to persons outside of the high school; all other rights reserved.
References
- Kasemo, B. et al.
Catalytic Ignition in the CO-O2 reaction on platinum: experimental simulations.
Surface Science issue 376:1997. - Somorjai, Gabor A. Chemistry in Two Dimensions: Surfaces. Cornell University Press, Ithica, NY: 1981.
- Tobin, Roger G.
- http://www.science.uwaterloo.ca/~cchieh/cat/clos/intratel.html
