if you decrease the temperature, what will happen?

Question

In an endothermic reaction at equilibrium, if you decrease the temperature, what will happen? 

Question 4 options:

A.	the amount of reactant and product will stay the same
B.	more product will be formed
C.	more reactant will be formed
D.	the reaction will go to completion and there will be no reactants left

Answer 1

This question deals with understanding Le Chatelier's principle. This states that a system at equilibrium will act to reverse any perturbation placed on that system, i.e. it will change to counteract the change that has been made to it.

An endothermic reaction is on in which heat is added to it, so heat can be viewed as a REACTANT. Thus we can write the reaction as A + B + HEAT ==> C + D

Decreasing the temperature is the same as removing heat. Thus, you are removing a reactant.

This will result in a shift to the left, toward the reactant side.

This will result in formation of more reactant = Answer C