INTRODUCTION TO CHEMICAL KINETICS

CHEMICAL KINETICS

Chemical kinetics is the study of speed of rate of chemical reaction and mechanisms through which reactions take place

• Rate of chemical reaction is the speed at which chemical reaction occurred.
• In the chemical reaction reactants are changed to products and the proportion of both reactants and products change with time.
• The amount (concentration) of reactants is maximum at the biggining but as the time progress the amount of reactants decreases while that of product increases.

The rate of chemical reaction can be obtained by measuring the amount of reactants used or amount of products formed at a given time.                                             
          Rate of chemical reaction = amount of reactants used /time interval
                                                                                         Or
           Rate of chemical reaction = amount of products formed / time interval
           
  The SI unit of time can be expressed as second (s), minutes, day, weak, months or years

COLLISSION THEORY 

Collision theory explain that for chemical reaction to take place the particles of reactants must collide. According to collision theory reacting particles must approach each other and collision must take place.
   Not all collision cause reaction, for the reaction to occur the particles must collide with sufficient energy. Collision with sufficient energy called effective collision

ACTIVATION ENERGY

Although reacting particles continue collide with one another, only collision possess certain minimum amount of energy result in chemical reaction. This energy called ACTIVATION ENERGY and particles which possess activation energy called activated particles.

NB:

     Activation energy is the minimum amount of energy required by reacting particles for the chemical reaction to occur.

Activation energy of reactants can be reduced by additional of catalyst.