Kinetics: what affects the speed of a reaction?

This chapter discusses chemical kinetics, looking at the factors that control the rate of a chemical reaction. The rate of a chemical reaction is the speed of change in concentration of reactants or products per unit time as the reaction proceeds. One can determine the rate of a reaction by measuring the concentrations of reactants or products at different times during the course of a reaction, and plotting on a graph the change of concentration with time. Every reaction has an energy threshold called the activation energy that must be reached before the reaction can occur. The chapter then considers catalysis and enzymes, and their impact upon the activation energy and reaction kinetics, before explaining enzyme kinetics and enzyme inhibition and the ways in which these can be described.