Temperature jump

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A temperature jump is a piece of apparatus useful in the study of chemical kinetics. It involves the discharging of a capacitor (in the kV range) through a small volume (<ml) solution containing the molecule/reaction to be studied. This causes the solution to rise in temperature by a few degrees in microseconds. This allows the study of the shift in equilibrium of reactions that equilibrate in milliseconds, these changes most commonly being observed using absorbance spectroscopy. Due to the small volumes involved the temperature of the solution returns to that of its surroundings in minutes.^[1]