What is the meaning of Arrhenius behavior?

[Topher925]

I'm always reading about reactions or physical phenomena having Arrhenius behavior. But I can't figure out what that means. I obviously did a search and I learned a lot about the physical chemist Arrhenius, but nothing about what the adjective named after him means.

 

[junglebeast]

The most important idea in the dissertation was his explanation of the fact that neither pure salts nor pure water is a conductor, but solutions of salts in water are.

Arrhenius' explanation was that in forming a solution, the salt dissociates into charged particles (which Michael Faraday had given the name ions many years earlier). Faraday's belief had been that ions were produced in the process of electrolysis; Arrhenius proposed that, even in the absence of an electric current, solutions of salts contained ions. He thus proposed that chemical reactions in solution were reactions between ions. For weak electrolytes this is still believed to be the case, but modifications (by Peter J. W. Debye and Erich Hückel) were found necessary to account for the behavior of strong electrolytes.

From this I would guess that one would describe a reaction in solution occurring between ions as Arrhenius behavior.

 

[MATLABdude]

Perhaps you're thinking of the Arrhenius relationship?
http://www.weibull.com/AccelTestWeb/arrhenius_relationship_chap_.htm

$$A e^{-\frac{E_{A}}{k_{B} T}}$$

Empirical relationship saying that things happen faster when it gets hotter ($k_{B}$, Boltzmann's constant multiplied by Temperature), and faster when there's a low activation energy / energy barrier ($E_{A}$).

 

[Topher925]

Perhaps you're thinking of the Arrhenius relationship?
http://www.weibull.com/AccelTestWeb/arrhenius_relationship_chap_.htm

$$A e^{-\frac{E_{A}}{k_{B} T}}$$

Empirical relationship saying that things happen faster when it gets hotter ($k_{B}$, Boltzmann's constant multiplied by Temperature), and faster when there's a low activation energy / energy barrier ($E_{A}$).

YES! Thanks, I can't believe I didn't know this. It seems so obvious.

 

[chemisttree]

It generally refers to the rate of reaction as Matlabdude indicated. In most discussions, it refers to the doubling of a given rate of reaction per 10^oC increase in temperature.