On the Mathematics of the Law of Mass Action

Abstract

In 1864,Waage and Guldberg formulated the "law of mass action." Since that time, chemists, chemical engineers, physicists and mathematicians have amassed a great deal of knowledge on the topic. In our view, sufficient understanding has been acquired to warrant a formal mathematical consolidation. A major goal of this consolidation is to solidify the mathematical foundations of mass action chemistry -- to provide precise definitions, elucidate what can now be proved, and indicate what is only conjectured. In addition, we believe that the law of mass action is of intrinsic mathematical interest and should be made available in a form that might transcend its application to chemistry alone. We present the law of mass action in the context of a dynamical theory of sets of binomials over the complex numbers.

40 pages, no figures

Cited by in corpus (10)

• A geometric approach to the Global Attractor Conjecture
• Catalysis in Reaction Networks
• Autocatalysis in Reaction Networks
• Decompositions of commutative monoid congruences and binomial ideals
• A Projection Argument for Differential Inclusions, with Applications to Persistence of Mass-Action Kinetics
• The dynamics of weakly reversible population processes near facets
• Siphons in chemical reaction networks
• The Thinking machine: a psychological view of Mawxwell's demon mind
• Computational Complexity of Atomic Chemical Reaction Networks
• Minimal invariant regions and minimal globally attracting regions for variable-k reaction systems