chem1 virtual textbook

a reference text for General Chemistry

Stephen Lower

Simon Fraser University

The chapters in this section deal with the rates and mechanism of chemical change. These topics stand in contrast to the subjects of equilibrium and thermodynamics that control the direction of chemical change.

The Chem1 Virtual Textbook is a resource for General Chemistry aimed mainly at the first-year university level. It offers a more comprehensive, organized, and measured approach than is found in most standard textbooks. It should also be accessible to advanced high-school courses, and helpful as review material for students in more advanced courses in chemistry, biology, geology, and engineering.

To access the desired page, click one of the lesson titles immediately below; you can also go directly to any sub-section within a lesson by clicking on a smaller heading.

1- Rates of reactions and rate laws

- Kinetics vs. thermodynamics
- The rates of chemical reactions
- Rate laws and reaction order

2- How rates of reactions change wth time

- Differential and integral rate laws
- Summary of rate laws and plots
- What you should be able to do
- Concept map

3- Collision and activation: the Arrhenius law

- Reaction mechanisms, molecularity
- Collision theory of chemical change
- Activation energy and the Arrhenius law
- What you should be able to do
- Concept map

4- Mechanisms: how reactions take place

- What is a reaction "mechanism?"
- Consecutive reactions
- Chain reactions
- Branching chains and explosions
- What you should be able to do
- Concept map

5- Kinetics of reactions in solution

- What's different about reactions in solution?
- Solvent polarity and its effects
- What you should be able to do
- Concept map

6- Catalysts and catalysis

- What are catalysts? How do they work?
- Homogeneous catalysis
- Heterogeneous catalysis
- Biocatalysis (enzymes)
- Concept map

7- Experimental methods of chemical kinetics

- Fundamentals of rate measurements
- Classical and student-lab methods
- The study of rapid reactions
- Flash photolysis
- Perturbation-relaxation methods

Some useful references

Book: An Introduction to Chemical Kinetics (Margaret Wright, 2004) - get

Book chapter: Rates and Mechanism of Chemical Reactions (Chapter 22 of Chemical Principles, 3rd Ed (1979) by Dickerson, Gray, and Haight.) Perfectly good for first-year general chemistry courses.

Online book chapter: Reaction Rates (Concept Development Studies in Chemistry, John Hutchinson)

MIT Principles of Chemistry Video Lectures - 2008:

L31: Rate Laws - go - notes
L33: Reaction Mechanisms - go
L34: Temperature and Kinetics - go
L35: Enzyme Catalysis - go

Khan Academy videos: Introduction to Kinetics - go

Web sites

Chemical Kinetics Notes (W. Salzman, U. Arizona 2000) - go

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