AbstractsChemistry

The study of organic chemical reactions has been intensified greatly in recent years. Thermodynamics and statistical mechanics have contributed generous results as to the possibility of chemical reaction and to the position of equilibrium attainable. Since, however, considerations of this type are concerned with probability states, and are static in their treatment, no knowledge is obtained of the interaction processes by which chemical change takes place. Chemical kinetics, on the other hand, involves characteristics of the reactive process and, allied with knowledge available from thermodynamics and statistical mechanics, forms an efficient method of attack. Progress in this field has made rapid advances in the last decade. It is not always easy, however, to interpret experimental data by the hypotheses which theories, in this branch of chemical study, propound. [...]