CHMA11H3 Chapter 13: Chapter 13

• School: UTSC
• Department: Chemistry
• Course: CHMA11H3
• Professor: Jamie Donaldson

Document Summary

13. 1 catching lizards: we can measure the rates of reactions that occur in times as short as several femtoseconds (10-15) The knowledge of reaction rates is not only practically important giving us the ability to control how fast a reaction occurs but also theoretically important. The rates of a chemical reaction is a measure of how fast the reaction occurs. If a chemical reaction has a slow rate, only a small fraction of molecules react to form products. If a chemical reaction has a fast rate, a large fraction of molecules react to form products: we usually express the measurement as a change in some quantity per unit of time. The rate of a chemical reaction is measured as a change in the amounts of reactants or products divided by the change in time. Therefore, when the rate is defined with respect to a product, we do not include a negative sign in the definition.