Three Hills, and Only One of Them Matters

You'll learnto read a multistep energy profile — peaks as transition states, valleys as intermediates, one rate-determining step.

A real mechanism draws one hill per step, with a resting place in each dip between them. Only one of those hills decides how fast the reaction goes, and it is not always the first. Twelve short steps; press Next for each one.

12 STEPS · 6 QUICK CHECKS · 3 STEPS · 2 INTERMEDIATES · v4

three hills, two wells, and one bottleneck

Before you start

What you're looking at

An energy profile with three hills and two dips, and a marker that walks it from the reactants to the products.

The question

Of the three hills, which one decides how fast the reaction goes?

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