Rate Laws

We like to classify the rates of reactions according to common elements. Scientists have devised rate laws to explain why phenomena keep happening over and over again, the same way, every time. Under conditions such that the reverse reaction (see equilibrium for a discussion of reverse reactions) can be neglected, the reaction rate depends only on the conentration of the reactants. If the rate depends only on the concentration of the reactants, then the rate of the reaction is proportional to the concentration of the reactants. Check out the order of reactions page for more details on the importance of this concept. Rate laws are simply mathematical representations of the rate of a reaction.

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