CHEM 120B Lecture Notes - Lecture 4: Reaction Mechanism, Activation Energy, Rate Equation
6 Feb 2017
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Getting from point a to point b is variable; there are different paths that are slower, less efficient, etc. Specific pathway that reactants follow to form products. Mechanisms are composed of elementary reactions; a single collision between two molecules. Unimolecular: one molecule that spontaneously breaks apart into two: requires some sort of energy input to break the bond. Bimolecular: two molecules crash into each other: two molecules may stick together or form other compounds. Trimolecular: three reactants collide at the same time: very rare: Orientation and timing must be simultaneous for this to occur. Temperature affects how much energy the molecules have during collision and how quickly a reactant turns forms products. Increasing the temperature does not change the actual pathway through which reactants are formed however. Successive activation energies should not be compared to the first activation energy (when dealing with a multi-step reaction) because of the different reactants.
