Reaction rates
The reaction rate (rate of reaction) or speed of reaction for a reactant or product in a particular reaction is intuitively defined as how quickly or slowly a reaction takes place. For example, the oxidative rusting of iron under Earth's atmosphere is a slow reaction that can take many years, but the combustion of cellulose in a fire is a reaction that takes place in fractions of a second.
Chemical kinetics is the part of physical chemistry that studies reaction rates. The concepts of chemical kinetics are applied in many disciplines, such as chemical engineering, enzymology and environmental engineering.
Consider a typical chemical reaction:
The lowercase letters (a, b, p, and q) represent stoichiometric coefficients, while the capital letters represent the reactants (A and B) and the products (P and Q).
According to IUPAC's Gold Book definition the reaction rate r for a chemical reaction occurring in a closed system under isochoric conditions, without a build-up of reaction intermediates, is defined as:
where [X] denotes the concentration of the substance X. Reaction rate usually has the units of mol L−1 s−1.
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