NSCI 1322 Lecture Notes - Lecture 58: Rate Equation, Alcohol Dehydrogenase, Reaction Rate Constant
12 Jan 2017
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Document Summary
A rate law tells you how the rate of a reaction depends on reactant concentrations at a particular moment. But often you would like to have a mathematical relationship showing how a reactant concentration changes over a period of time. Such an equation would be directly comparable to the experimental data, which are usually obtained as concentrations at various times. In addition to summarizing the experimental data, this equation would predict concentrations for all times. Using calculus, we can transform a rate law into a mathematical relationship between concentration and time called an integrated rate law. Because we will work only with the final equations, we need not go into the derivations here. There are instances where reactions are zero-order. An example includes the decomposition of ethyl alcohol in the liver in the presence of the enzyme liver alcohol dehydrogenase. Zero-order kinetics is always an artifact of the conditions under which the reaction is carried out.
