In this chapter, you should be able to:

• explain and use the terms
  • rate of reaction
  • activation energy, including reference to the Boltzmann distribution
  • catalysis
• explain qualitatively how the following affect the rate of a chemical reaction:
  • concentration (in terms of collision frequency)
  • temperature (in terms of both the Boltzmann distribution and collision frequency)
  • catalyst (in terms of changing a reaction’s mechanism, lowering the activation energy and the Boltzmann distribution)
• explain that catalysts can be homogeneous or heterogeneous and describe enzymes as biological catalysts (proteins) that may have specificity.