Catalysis Lab: Surface Reaction Simulator

Catalysts speed up chemical reactions without being consumed by them, by opening a lower-energy pathway between reactants and products. This simulator visualizes heterogeneous catalysis directly: gas-phase reactant molecules drift above a solid catalyst slab and adsorb onto open active sites; once two adsorbed reactants occupy neighbouring sites they can react on the surface and the resulting product desorbs back into the gas phase, freeing the sites for the next cycle. Switching the catalyst between none, platinum and palladium changes the activation energy Eₐ in the Arrhenius equation k = A·exp(−Eₐ/RT) shown live in the energy diagram, while temperature and reactant concentration control how fast that cycle repeats — together they show why a good catalyst and enough heat both matter for a practical reaction rate.