In this video, we're going to begin our lesson on the enzyme activation energy. And so the activation energy is sometimes called the energy of activation, and it's commonly abbreviated as just EA. And so the activation energy or energy of activation or EA is really defined as the difference in energy between the reactants of a reaction and the transition state of a reaction. Now we'll define the transition state here very shortly. But first, focusing in on the activation energy or the EA, the EA or the activation energy represents the minimum amount of energy that's required to start a chemical reaction. Now all reactions have an activation energy, and that includes both exergonic and endergonic reactions. And so the higher the energy of activation is, the slower the reaction will be. And so the energy of activation is really just going to dictate the speed that the reaction will occur. The higher the reaction energy of activation is, the slower the reaction will take place. And so the lower the energy of activation is, the faster the reaction will take place. Now, the transition state is defined as a temporary state of maximum energy within a reaction. And so let's take a look at our image down below to start to clear some of this stuff up. And so notice that we're showing you this graph down below where on the y-axis we have the free energy and on the x-axis we have the reaction progress or the time as the reaction proceeds. And so notice that we're starting off with some reactants and the reactants have higher free energy than the products which are down below which have lower free energy. And so that makes this an exergonic reaction. And so we can label the reactants as having higher energy than the products which have low energy. And so notice that the transition state again is going to be a temporary state of maximum energy in a reaction. And so where there is maximum energy is at the peak of this curve here. And so at the very peak is where we will find the transition state, and so we can label this as the transition state. And so the activation energy, recall, is defined as the difference in energy between the reactants and the transition state. And so if we find the reactants, notice the reactants are right here, and the transition state is right here. And so the difference in energy between the two is going to be represented by this region that is right here, the activation energy. And so we can label the activation energy, which is shown by this yellow bar here. The activation energy is abbreviated as EA, and it's going to represent the minimum amount of energy required to start the chemical reaction. And so even in an exergonic reaction like this, there is a minimum amount of energy that needs to be overcome in order for the reaction to proceed. And so this here is showing how the activation energy is represented by this difference in energy between the transition state and the reactants, and the activation energy is going to determine the speed of the reaction. The higher the activation energy is, the slower the reaction will be. And so now that we better, we understand we've introduced the activation energy or EA, in our next video, we'll talk about how enzymes affect the activation energy. So I'll see you all in that video.
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Enzyme Activation Energy
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