What effect would an increase in temperature have on the rate of diffusion? Why?
Diffusion would increase with respect to temperature increase. The atoms/molecules within the material/fluid have more energy in the form of temperature. This causes them to overcome the activation energy required to diffuse (move past other atoms) easier. And so diffusion rate increases. You can see the equation for ficks law here, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fick%27s_law which describes diffusion. The only term in the equation which is temperature dependant is Diffusivity, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_diffusivity You can see (don’t know how good your maths is) that the term e^-(Ea/RT) means as T increases the term(Ea/RT) decreases, and because this term is to the Negative power the [e^-(Ea/RT)] would increase, so Diffusivity increases and so the rate of diffusion therefore increases.
