Chemical kinetics

Chemical kinetics, also called reaction kinetics, is the branch of physical chemistry connected with study of how fast chemical reactions go. This includes studying how different conditions such as temperature, pressure or solvent used, affect the speed of a reaction. Chemical kinetics can also be used to find out about reaction mechanisms and transition states.

The basic idea of chemical kinetics is called collision theory. This states that for a reaction to happen, the molecules must hit each other. Ways of increasing the speed of the reaction must therefore increase the number of hits. This can be done in many ways.

With experiments it is possible to calculate reaction rates from which you can get rate laws and rate constants. A rate law is a mathematical expression with which you can calculate the speed of a reaction given the concentration of the reagents.