I’ve asked this question to multiple teachers and googled it multiple times only to hear “yeah if you put a catalyst in a chemical it reacts faster” but I want to know what the catalyst actually does to do this
In: Chemistry
The example that is often used is burning wood.
Imagine a pile of fire wood. If you add sufficient heat, the wood will begin to burn, and then keep burning until it is all turned into ash and smoke. However, in order to start that reaction, you have to raise the temperature of the wood quite high, you have to overcome its activation energy. **A catalyst reduces the energy of activation**, allowing the reaction to proceed faster, sort of like putting gasoline on the wood. Now instead of needing to get the wood to a high temperature, you only need to get it hot enough to ignite the gas, which will then ignite the wood.
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