ABSTRACT
How quickly do reactants disappear? How fast are products created? How do the electrons rearrange during the course of a reaction? What effect does temperature have on the rate of reaction? All of these questions lie at the heart of chemical kinetics, which seeks to understand and model the rates of reaction. The rate of reaction and its dependence on the amount of each chemical is expressed in the rate law, which contains the terms the rate constant (k) and the concentration of each chemical species raised to an appropriate exponent. While the amount of chemical present can be changed, the rate constant is dependent on the temperature and on the activation barrier (E a), the energy input needed to initiate the reaction. And so changing the temperature can, by changing the rate constant, affect the rate of reaction. Finally, with this information, the mechanism of a chemical reaction – how the electrons flow in a chemical reaction – can also be investigated.
