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  Home > JCE Print > Journal of Chemical Education > Issues > 2003  > May  >
In the Classroom
What Is the Overall Stoichiometry of a Complex Reaction?
Sidney Toby and Irwin Tobias
Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology, Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, Piscataway, NJ 08854
Cover
May 2003
Vol. 80 No. 5
p. 520
Abstract
The overall stoichiometry of a reaction having a multistep mechanism can be derived using methods based on either of the following two approaches: elemental-balance or extent of reaction. The extent of reaction method (ξ method) has been used for many years. We have recently shown (J.Chem. Educ. 2000, 77, 188) that integration of rate equations (the kinetic method) offers an alternative to the ξ method using methods that may be more familiar to many chemists. The two methods are, however, equivalent and give the same results, as pointed out in the Appendix. The elemental-balance method is the simplest of the three methods but, as we shall show, it does not always give as much information about the system being analyzed as do the other two methods. In this paper both elemental-balance and kinetic methods will be used to derive stoichiometric relationships and the results will be compared. We show that each method has its advantages and conclude that both methods are useful in different contexts.
More Information
*  Citation
 Toby, Sidney; Tobias, Irwin. J. Chem. Educ. 2003 80 520.
*  Keywords
 Kinetics; Mechanisms; Stoichiometry
*  History
 Created:
Last Updated:		 March 28, 2003
February 28, 2005
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