Kinetic Processes to Music

A Mathematical Foundation

Throughout the chemistry series, we have become all too familiar with the following equation describing a first order reaction rate, where Ct is a concentration at a given time, C0 is the initial concentration, t is the time, and k is a constant:

However, Professor Kumbar (introduced in "The Periodic Table of Notes") thought of this equation in a musical way, where C0 represented the amplitude and k represented the timbre (type of sound), which could together be correlated to the pitch. Using the recorded reaction concentrations and calculated frequencies for moments in the decomposition of N2O5, he created the graph to the right, which was then translated into the staff of notes at the top of this page. Notice how a fast change in C0 (aka amplitude) at the start translates into a large initial note difference and vice versa for later notes as the reaction slows down.

Note: The full process has been omitted as it requires knowledge of Fourier transformations, which goes beyond our scope of knowledge

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