Section 1: Introduction to Kinetics

In Part 1, we learned about which chemical reactions can happen (those with ΔSuniv>0) and how far they proceed. Thermodynamics cannot, however, tell us how quickly a reaction proceeds. To understand the speed of reactions we need to consider kinetics. Using the kinetics introduced in this section, you’ll be able to understand why spontaneous reactions aren’t instantaneous, what determines the rate of a chemical reaction, and how to predict the rate of a chemical equation.