Half Life of a Reaction

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Half life of a reaction is defined as the time required for reducing the concentration of a reactant to half its initial value. It is denoted as t_1/2.

As discussed before, the t_1/2 of a zero order reaction is given as

while for the first order reaction it is given as

In general, for a reaction of order n, t_1/2 is proportional to initial concentration of A raised to power n - 1, that is,

Only for the first order reaction t_1/2 is independent of the initial concentration of the reactant. This relation can be used to determine the order of a reaction.