Year 11 Science – Rate of Reaction Investigation

What are the factors that affect how fast a chemical reaction occurs?
In Year 11 Science, students investigated the rate of chemical reaction between magnesium metal and hydrochloric acid, which releases hydrogen gas as a product.  Students chose to change either the temperature of the acid, the concentration of the acid or the mass of the magnesium metal, to see how that affected the volume of hydrogen gas released in a specific quantity of time.