For a bimolecular reaction involving a single species A where
in a single elementary step, the rate law is
Several types of non-linear equations require loading of a special
Mathematical library. Do this for the rest of this session by
executing the command:
 | <<Calculus`DSolve`; |
Now modify the DSolve command for the first order reaction above to
solve for this case.....be sure to clear the constants k and a0,
or your will not get a "general"solution. To see what this means. You
could "not" clear k and a0, run DSolve, and then clear them and
repeat....what is the difference? Does this make sense? A bit later
we will see that working with the general solution (i.e. the solution
expressed in terms of the arbitrary constants k and a0) is rather
more useful than one expressed in terms of specific pre-set values.
Q: Determine the half-life from a plot generated for the case
a0=1.0 and for the case a0=10.0. Is there a definite half-life for
this reaction? Namely, does the half life in this case depend on a0?
How does this differ from the first order case? If you only had
experimental data for the concentration of the chemical A at various
times, what kind of graph would tell whether the reaction is first
order or second order? Illustrate with a plot for each case.
Hannes Jonsson
Modified by Thomas L. Marchioro II
and the Undergraduate Computational Engineering and Science project