Lukas Zell^1,, Dennis Lüke¹, Marco Oetken¹

The use of catalysts in chemistry and biology is ubiquitous. To help students understand the nature of catalysis, several experiments on catalysis are used in schools. These all have one drawback - the cause of the lowered activation energy remains unknown. In this article we present the catalytic decomposition of hydrogen peroxide using molybdate ions. This model catalyst provides a detailed insight into the reaction process through two coloured intermediates, allowing direct phenomenological conclusions to be drawn about the alternative reaction pathway. This is the true reason for the reduced activation energy.

Catalysis, hydrogen peroxide, molybdate, chromate, alternative reaction pathway