The dynamics and chemistry of oscillating reactions has been the subject of study only for the last 50 years, starting with the work of Belousov. The mechanism for the Brusselator is given by
. The two species of interest are
and
, the autocatalytic species. The differential equations given in dimensionless form for these species are
and
. For this analysis all rate constants except those of the second step are assumed to equal 1 and the reactants
and
are assumed to be in large enough excess so that their concentrations do not change with time. Both the parameters
and
are changed in the Demonstration, and as a result concentration-time curves and trajectories (selectivity curves in chemical terms) are shown.
Browse all topics
