Chemical Kinetics and Transport

This book began as a program of self-education. While teaching under- graduate physical chemistry, I became progressively more dissatisfied with my approach to chemical kinetics. The solution to my problem was to write a detailed set of lecture notes which covered more material, in greater depth, than could be presented in undergraduate physical chemistry. These notes are the foundation upon which this book is built. My background led me to view chemical kinetics as closely related to transport phenomena. While the relationship of these topics is well known, it is often ignored, except for brief discussions of irreversible thermody- namics. In fact, the physics underlying such apparently dissimilar processes as reaction and energy transfer is not so very different. The intermolecular potential is to transport what the potential-energy surface is to reactivity. Instead of beginning the sections devoted to chemical kinetics with a discussion of various theories, I have chosen to treat phenomenology and mechanism first. In this way the essential unity of kinetic arguments, whether applied to gas-phase or solution-phase reaction, can be emphasized. Theories of rate constants and of chemical dynamics are treated last, so that their strengths and weaknesses may be more clearly highlighted. The book is designed for students in their senior year or first year of graduate school. A year of undergraduate physical chemistry is essential preparation. While further exposure to chemical thermodynamics, statistical thermodynamics, or molecular spectroscopy is an asset, it is not necessary.