In 1889, Svante Arrhenius explained the variation of rate constants with temperature for several elementary reactions using the relationship k = A exp(-Ea/RT) where the rate constant k is the total frequency of collisions between reaction molecules A times the fraction of collisions exp(-Ea/RT) that have an energy that exceeds a threshold activation energy Ea at a temperature of T (in kelvins). R is the universal gas constant.
critical temperature half-life London force pressure transition state
A relation used to describe the temperature dependence of the rate coefficient for a chemical reaction. The form of the equation is where is the rate coefficient, is the preexponential factor, is the activation energy for the reaction, is the gas constant, and is the absolute temperature.
The Arrhenius equation is a simple, but remarkably accurate, formula for the temperature dependence of a chemical reaction rate, more correctly, of a rate coefficient, as this coefficient includes all magnitudes that affect reaction rate except for concentration.http://www.iupac.org/goldbook/A00446.pdf Arrhenius equation - IUPAC Goldbook definition The equation was first proposed by the Dutch chemist J. H. van't Hoff in 1884; five years later, the Swedish chemist Svante Arrhenius provided a physical justification and interpretation for it. Nowadays it is best seen as an empirical relationship Kenneth Connors, Chemical Kinetics, 1990, VCH Publishers.
