Pseudo Rate Law [ENDORSED]

[Nancy Le - 1F]

The pseudo rate law is the rate law in between elementary steps, but under what conditions would we need to use this?

[Mika Sonnleitner 1A]

Pseudo rate laws are used essentially when the order is determined by increasing the concentrations of one or more reactants. For example, in the rate law Rate=k[A][B][C], if [B] and [C] are in large excess, then they remain essentially constant, so [A] determines the rate. Since only [A] matters in this case, the reaction would be pseudo first order; it is first order when considering only [A], but because there are two other concentrations involved that don't technically matter in the rate law, it is called a psuedo first order reaction.

[Michael Cheng 1C]

Are there any homework problems where we use the pseudo rate law?

[Kayla Danesh 1F]

Problem 15.30 is a pseudo-rate law problem. I think we mostly just need to understand this topic conceptually though.