Catalysis

As mentioned in the energy page, catalysts lower the activation energy for a reaction. How do they do this? Although each catalyst and its effects are different, they essentially provide a new pathway to the same product. The catch is, the catalyst is not used up during the reaction. This makes it very difficult to find catalysts in nature, because the substance must participate in the reaction, but be regenerated IN THE SAME QUANTITIES by the end of the reaction. If you want to check out catalysis at work, try the sugar cube experiment. Or, if you are teaching this area, try out the autocatalysis lab.

In biological systems, enzymes are the catalysts of most reactions. Enzymes work exactly the same way, but typically catalyze only a specific group of reactions.

Reactions that are catalyzed are known as zero order reactions. This is because the catalyst is not used up in the reaction, and the rate of the reaction is only dependent on how many reactant molecules the catalyst can react with and how fast the catalyst can help the reaction proceed.

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