5.5.A—Explain the relationship between the rate of an elementary reaction and the frequency, energy, and orientation…

Explain the relationship between the rate of an elementary reaction and the frequency, energy, and orientation of particle collisions.

• For an elementary reaction to successfully produce products, reactants must successfully collide to initiate bond-breaking and bondmaking events.
• In most reactions, only a small fraction of the collisions leads to a reaction. Successful collisions have both sufficient energy to overcome the activation energy requirements and orientations that allow the bonds to rearrange in the required manner.
• The Maxwell-Boltzmann distribution curve describes the distribution of particle energies; this distribution can be used to gain a qualitative estimate of the fraction of collisions with sufficient energy to lead to a reaction, and also how that fraction depends on temperature.