Significance of Molecularity

[Katy Austin 1K]

Can anyone explain what the significance of molecularity is?

[Sydney Lam_2I]

I believe that molecularity just helps the viewer understand how many molecules need to collide with one another in order to successfully create a product.

[Christine Ma 3L]

Adding on to the above post, all molecularity is is the number of species in each elementary step, and its significance mainly lies in the fact that the rate law for each elementary step follows directly from its molecularity (e.g. a bimolecular reaction is second order). Hope this helps!

[Ashrita Singh 2F]

Molecularity just allows us to visualize the number and rate of molecules that are participating in each step.

[Daniel Li 3C]

I think that it just displays how many molecules and how fast a reaction is occurring. It displays each elementary step with the molecules active in it.

[Sujin Lim 1H]

To add on, molecularity also helps us to write out the rate laws for elementary reactions in the reaction mechanism, since for elementary reactions we can write its rate law with all the reactants involved (unlike for the overall reaction where we can not determine the order of the reaction by just looking at the overall balanced equation). Therefore, if an elementary step is unimolecular, we know that it is a first order reaction, and if it s bimolecular, the elementary reaction is second order, and so on. Hope this helps!