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ERIC Number: EJ1452116
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2024-Jan
Pages: 6
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-0021-9584
EISSN: EISSN-1938-1328
Available Date: N/A
A Colorful Activity to Introduce Kinetics and the Rate-Determining Step: Application to Metabolism and Metabolic Control Analysis
Daniel F. McCain; Evelyn K. McCain
Journal of Chemical Education, v101 n1 p181-186 2024
The following activity was developed to allow students to actively participate in and measure the kinetics of a multistep process. Each group of students is given a stack of blank coloring pages, each with a rainbow design printed on it. Each student in a group is given a different color crayon and colors in their portion of the picture before passing it to the next student while being timed. The rates of each individual step of the process and the rate of the overall process are calculated. During this activity, students can observe the rate-determining step of a process, the accumulation of intermediates, and how the overall rate relates to the rates of the individual steps. It can be used during the teaching of kinetics and mechanisms within introductory chemistry, physical chemistry, or biochemistry. In the current report, it has been used as an analogy to metabolic pathways and to introduce metabolic control analysis (MCA) quantitatively. It involves no special equipment and minimal setup time on the part of the instructor.
Division of Chemical Education, Inc. and ACS Publications Division of the American Chemical Society. 1155 Sixteenth Street NW, Washington, DC 20036. Tel: 800-227-5558; Tel: 202-872-4600; e-mail: eic@jce.acs.org; Web site: http://pubs.acs.org/jchemeduc
Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Descriptive
Education Level: N/A
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A
Author Affiliations: N/A