Who Invented Collision Theory?
Collision theory was invented and developed during the course of World War I which was in itself a ‘Collision’ of imperialist nations vying for power. It was invented by two people independently on the opposite sides of the war, one a brilliant German chemist named Max Trautz in 1916 and the other a British professor of chemistry named William Lewis in 1918. Basics of Collision Theory Collision theory, as the name abundantly suggests, models a chemical reaction as an inelastic and chaotic collision of millions of reactant molecules simultaneously. Some collisions just occur at the right energies and at right angles to break certain old chemical bonds and make new ones. Breaking an old bond requires energy from a collision. Whereas, making a new bond, releases energy in the form of heat. The exact energy required for a particular old bond to be broken and a new one to be formed is called the ‘Activation Energy’. This is the threshold energy at or beyond which, if the collisons occur, ne
