Question

Explain the formulation of the general second order chemical reaction.

Answer 1

Hint :There are many different order chemical reactions such as zero order chemical reaction, first order chemical reaction, second order chemical reaction. There is also a third order chemical reaction present there but we don’t have to study it as it is out of syllabus for secondary level students and also other competitive exams.

Complete Step By Step Answer:
There are two ways to represent the second order reaction and these are $ aA + bB \to cC + dD $ and the other one is $ Rate = k{\left[ A \right]^x}{\left[ B \right]^y} $ where k is a rate constant, $ \left[ A \right] $ and $ \left[ B \right] $ are the reactant concentration and the x and y are the order of the reaction which are determined by the experiments. If we add the value of x and y then we get the order of the reaction. For example, if the sum of x and y is two then the order of the reaction is two. Now, the unit of rate constant (k) for second order reaction is $ {M^{ - 1}}{s^{ - 1}} $ . Generally the second order reaction can be written in the form as $ 2A \to Product $ or $ A + B \to Product $ .

Note :
Here are some of the examples of second order reaction: $ {H^ + } + O{H^ - } \to {H_2}O $ , $ C + {O_2} \to C{O_2} $ , $ 2HI \to {I_2} + {H_2} $ . The rate of second order reaction can be written as $ r = k{\left[ A \right]^2} $ or as $ r = k\left[ A \right]\left[ B \right] $ . The formula for the half-life of second order reaction is $ {t_{\dfrac{1}{2}}} = \dfrac{1}{{k{{\left[ R \right]}_o}}} $ . It also has its importance in medical study. By the use of second order chemical reactions many biological reactions, such as formation of double stranded DNA from two complementary strands can be described.