[pcurran871]

Hi I'm new on this site and hope to use it a lot more now that I've found a forum with useful information on it. I have come across this in a past paper (Chemical engineering undergraduate) and I am having trouble answering it and was hoping someone could answer it?

Explain in detail the principles of transition state theory and how it can be
used to understand the effect of changing solvent on the rate of a chemical
reaction process. Your explanation should include a description of the
following terms:
- reaction coordinate,
- transition state,
- free energy of activation, deltaG^# ,
- relative free energy of activation, delta delta G^#

Thanks,
Paddy

[Corribus]

You can look any of this up in a good text book. And in any case, the rules of the forum require you to attempt to answer a question before you receive help.

[Jackson Murphy]

The use of the word coordinate indicates the presence of coordination and numerical relationship.

Turning to reactions they represent the transition from one set of circumstances to another set of circumstances.

The question that arises is can that transition in the case of chemical reactions be seen as a involving intermediate clusters of characteristics?

Transition states represent those clusters.

Given that solvents influence is based upon particular characteristics of other property clusters they are present amongst the question becomes how does is that effect different upon reactants as compared to transition states, with change in things like reaction speed considered?

Would you want solvents to cause transition states to hang around more or less?

[pcurran871]

I didn't realise the rules of the forum being new sorry. In any case I couldn't attempt this as I have no idea how. If no-one can/ will answer the question for me then could someone point me in the direction of a book and hopefully where in the book I should look? I have been looking in Chemical Reaction Engineering by Levenspiel but can't find it and I am quite short on time with my exam being in a couple of days.

[Corribus]

Any decent physical or possibly even general chemistry textbook will have information on these topics. They are very broad questions, so short of throwing paragraphs of information at you, there's not much we could probably do to help without you narrowing down your problem area.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reaction_coordinate
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transition_state_theory
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Activation_energy
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eyring_equation

If you read through those, you should be able to at least take a stab at an explanation for how solvent polarity impacts the rate of a reaction. Then it will be a more suitable place for someone here to step in and help you along the right path.

[pcurran871]

Any decent physical or possibly even general chemistry textbook will have information on these topics. They are very broad questions, so short of throwing paragraphs of information at you, there's not much we could probably do to help without you narrowing down your problem area.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reaction_coordinate
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transition_state_theory
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Activation_energy
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eyring_equation

If you read through those, you should be able to at least take a stab at an explanation for how solvent polarity impacts the rate of a reaction. Then it will be a more suitable place for someone here to step in and help you along the right path.

These actually helped a lot thanks! I definitely dont know it in detail but know enough to make a rough explanation which is all I need just in case it comes up. Thanks for your *delete me*