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Article: Kinetics
- Article from:
- Chemistry: Foundations and Applications
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Kinetics
Chemical kinetics is the study of the rates of chemical reactions. Such reaction rates range from the almost instantaneous, as in an explosion, to the almost unnoticeably slow, as in corrosion. The aim of chemical kinetics is to make predictions about the composition of reaction mixtures as a function of time, to understand the processes that occur during a reaction, and to identify what controls its rate.
Rates and Rate Laws
The rate of a chemical reaction is defined as the rate of change of the concentration of one of its components, either a reactant or a product. The experimental investigation of reaction rates therefore depends on being able to monitor the change of ...