Law of Mass Action

Abstract

The law of mass action is a powerful concept that describes the average behavior of a system that consists of many interacting parts such as molecules that react with each other, or viruses that are passed along from a population of infected individuals to nonimmune ones. In this chapter, we discuss the law of mass action in the context of a simple chemical system and lay the groundwork for later chapters where will apply it to issues as diverse as enzyme–substrate interactions, the spread of a disease, or the colonization of landscape patches.

Let us now consider the character of the material Nature whose necessary results have been made available… for a final cause.

(Aristotle)

A save-disabled version of STELLA and the computer models of this book are available at www.iseesystems.com/modelingdynamicbiologicalsystems.