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The Rate-Determining Step

This video presents the same text shown beside it, spoken and on screen. It adds nothing the text does not say.

State

A mechanism's rate-determining step is its slowest elementary step, and the overall reaction proceeds no faster than that step allows.

Show

Cattle through a narrow chute pass only as fast as one animal clears it, however quickly they reach the entrance.

Watch for

Assuming a mechanism's first written step is always rate-determining is wrong — any step can be slowest, regardless of order.