In this part of your course we shall look at the rate of chemical reactions. In your previous studies you may have seen that chemical reactions occur at different rates .
Some reactions are extremely fast whilst others are very slow.
However, not all reactions that are thermodynamically favoured occur spontaneously, take, for example diamond. Diamond, a form of carbon, is thermodynamically less stable than graphite but, thankfully for diamond merchants, the conversion of diamond into graphite does not occur spontaneously. To begin to understand this, and other aspects of reaction rate, we must consider kinetics . The study of reaction kinetics is fraught with mathematics but you will be relieved to know that I shall shy away from the maths as much as I can. Reaction Rates Chemical reactions require varying lengths of time for completion, depending upon the characteristics of the reactants and products and the conditions under which the reaction is taking place.