I was studying reactions zero order reaction first order reaction second order reaction. It also included these formulas [A]= [Ao]-[ko](t) as well as formula of [At]=[Ao]e^-kt and half life=1/2[A0][k0] . I am confused with these formulas however do I need to get really in depth about knowing and memorizing these formula?
Oat General Chemistry ..Half live.. people who have taken the exam already
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Those formulas give you a time course relationship of how the reaction proceeds, it's just a way for us to calculate the concentration of reactant left after a certain amount of time. Because different order reactions proceed differently, we need a different equation for each order. Just understand what each part of the formula represents, [A] is the concentration of reactant at time t, [A]0 is your initial concentration that you started with, k is rate constant and t is time. The OAT most likely won't ask you to do anything complicated via graphical analysis with those formulas, just know how to plug in the numbers.
In my opinion, with kinetics it's important to be able to identify what order a reaction is so that you can apply its conditions. I would memorize the time course formulas and half-life formulas for a 0 and 1st order reaction as well as knowing what the time course equations look like when plotted on a graph ([A] plotted vs t). For a 0 order reaction; you get a straight line with negative slope (where the value of the slope is equal to -k). For 1st order, you get a curve. As far as I know, determining the time course and half lives for 2nd order reactions is beyond the scope of the OAT, I would just know how to identify a 2nd order reaction.