# What is the Arrhenius Equation

: an equation describing the mathematical relationship between temperature and the rate of a chemical reaction

Note: The Arrhenius equation is sometimes expressed as k = Ae-E/RT where k is the rate of chemical reaction, A is a constant depending on the chemicals involved, E is the activation energy, R is the universal gas constant, and T is the temperature.

What we’re really looking at here is what’s known as the Arrhenius equation. Svante August Arrhenius was a Nobel Prize winning Swedish chemist around the turn of the century. He observed that an increase of 18° F will about double the rate of the average chemical reaction. And the same holds true in reverse: the colder the temperature, the less the rate of reaction.— Matt Kramer, Wine Spectator, 15 May 1998Ideas from elementary statistical mechanics allowed determination of the energies displayed in the figure: The activation barriers were obtained using the Arrhenius relation, whereas the Boltzmann relation was used to determine the bound-state energy difference.— Harold J. W. Zandvliet et al., Physics Today, July 2001