Archive of posts in category “chemistry”
Algebraic structure of chemicals
Regarding balancing chemical equations, actually we are trying to find a non-trivial linear combination of some chemicals to get zero. The interesting thing is that the coefficients can only be integers (), which is not a field, so the algebraic structure of chemicals is not linear space. They actually live in a free -module. See how I formalize this idea in mathematical language.
- Categories: chemistry
- Tags: linear algebra, abstract algebra
The concentration change of gas in reversible reactions
A reversible elementary reaction takes place inside a closed, highly thermally conductive container of constant volume, whose reactants are all gases. Given the reaction equations and the reaction rate constants, a natural question to ask is how the concentration of each gas changes w.r.t. time. In this article, I will answer this question by proposing a general approach to solve it.
- Categories: chemistry
- Tags: calculus, ode, chemical reaction, long paper