Title
Agreement, Complement, and Disagreement to “Why Are Some Reactions Slower at Higher Temperatures?”
Document Type
Article
Department or Administrative Unit
Chemistry
Publication Date
5-30-2017
Abstract
In the article “Why Are Some Reactions Slower at Higher Temperatures?” published in this Journal, Revell and Williamson explained, from the enthalpic and entropic aspects, why an A + B → P reaction may proceed more slowly at higher temperatures via an A + B ↔ C → P mechanism using the pre-equilibrium approximation. Their explanation is convincing but may be too abstract for undergraduate physical chemistry students to understand fully. In this communication, a numerical implementation and graphical demonstrations of their explanation are provided for students to use to “see” for themselves a negative activation energy. Although Revell and Williamson perfectly explained the negative temperature dependence of the A + B ↔ C → P reaction rate, great caution must be exercised when their explanation is applied to interstellar chemistry where the pre-equilibrium approximation may be invalid and statistical thermodynamics functions may be ill-defined.
Recommended Citation
Ge, Y. (2017). Agreement, Complement, and Disagreement to “Why Are Some Reactions Slower at Higher Temperatures?” Journal of Chemical Education, 94(6), 821–823. https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.jchemed.7b00208
Journal
Journal of Chemical Education
Rights
Copyright © 2017 The American Chemical Society and Division of Chemical Education, Inc.
Comments
This article was originally published in Journal of Chemical Education. The full-text article from the publisher can be found here.
Due to copyright restrictions, this article is not available for free download from ScholarWorks @ CWU.