What is catalysis and how does a catalyst speed up a reaction?
The Shortcut Helper
What is catalysis and how does a catalyst speed up a reaction?
Some chemical reactions are in a tremendous hurry. Others are slowpokes that would happily take a thousand years to finish. So here's a magic trick that isn't actually magic: a substance can swoop in, make a reaction go faster, and walk away completely unchanged. That sneaky helper is called a catalyst, and what it does is called catalysis.
First, let's see why some reactions drag their feet. For two molecules to react, they don't just bump — they have to bump hard enough, and in just the right way, to break old bonds and build new ones. Most gentle bumps do nothing at all. The molecules just shrug and float off, still strangers.
