Determining Rate of Flow through a Funnel

In this Activity, students make funnels using plastic beverage bottles and rubber stoppers with differing numbers of holes or sizes of holes. They then determine the rate of flow of water through the funnels and identify factors that affect the rate of flow. This Activity uses easy-to-observe phenomena that model a chemical reaction with an identifiable rate-controlling step. This Activity can be extended to include other experiments that model kinetics as well as to introduce graphs in kinetics before students study an actual chemical reaction.