What is an integrated rate law?
1 Answer
An integrated rate law is an equation that expresses the concentrations of reactants or products as a function of time.
An integrated rate law comes from an ordinary rate law.
Consider the first order reaction
A → Products
The rate law is: rate =
But
If you don't know calculus, don't worry. Just skip ahead 8 lines to the final result.
If you know calculus, you know that, as the Δ increments become small, the equation becomes
If we integrate this differential rate law, we get
At
So the integrated rate law for a first order reaction is
This equation is often written as
In the same way, we can derive the integrated rate law for any other order of reaction.