Arrhenius Equation

The Arrhenius equation is a mathematical formula describing how the rate of a chemical reaction depends on temperature, expressing the rate constant of a reaction as a function of the absolute temperature, an activation energy specific to that reaction, and a pre-exponential factor related to the frequency of molecular collisions with the correct orientation for a reaction to occur. Swedish chemist Svante Arrhenius proposed the equation in an 1889 paper, building on earlier empirical observations of the relationship between temperature and reaction rate made by Dutch chemist Jacobus van 't Hoff. The equation captures the empirical observation, general across most chemical reactions, that reaction rates increase rapidly, typically by a factor of roughly two to four, for every ten-degree Celsius increase in temperature, by showing that the rate depends exponentially on temperature through the activation energy term, the minimum energy that colliding molecules must possess for a reaction to proceed. Arrhenius received the 1903 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his broader theoretical work on ionic dissociation, and the equation bearing his name remains a fundamental, widely used tool in chemical kinetics for determining a reaction's activation energy from measurements of its rate at different temperatures.