Problem
The concentration of a reactant in a first-order chemical reaction that proceeds at a rate & can be described as follows: In C = In Co - kt, where C is the concentration of the reactant at time t, Co is the initial concentration and t is the elapsed time since the reaction started. Consider an initial concentration of Co = 0.3 mol/L. The experiment was repeated n times to give a geometric mean of the concentration at time t = 450 seconds of 0.22 mol/L. The geometric standard deviation of the concentration at time t = 450 seconds is 1.17.
i. Compute the mean of the rate constant k.
ii. Compute the standard deviation of the rate constant k. Hint: Use the fact that k is a linear function of y = In C.