The Oxygen That Slows Its Own Reaction

You'll learnhow a fast reversible step lets you trade an intermediate out of a rate law for something you can measure.

Ozone breaks down into ordinary oxygen, and the more oxygen you pile into the flask, the slower it goes. Nothing in the balanced equation hints at that. Twelve short steps; press Next for each one.

12 STEPS · 6 QUICK CHECKS · 2 O₃ → 3 O₂ · v4

a mechanism you cannot see · a rate law you can measure

Before you start

What you're looking at

Ozone breaking down to oxygen, the two-step mechanism underneath it, and a ledger that fills in one line at a time.

The question

Why does adding oxygen slow the reaction down, when no coefficient could say so?

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