5.3: Kinetics Hint at the Reaction Mechanism
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Since the different mechanisms have different rate-limiting steps, there are kinetic consequences for each type of mechanism. We can used kinetic data, therefore, to help distinguish the mechanism of a reaction. However, the information gleaned from rate laws alone can be ambiguous. For example, what does it mean if a reaction depends on on the concentration of incoming ligand? How can we distinguish between an associative mechanism (\(A\)), and an associatively-activated dissociative mechanism (\(D_a\)?