noun
Etymology
Origin of reactant
Explanation
A reactant is a substance that changes in a chemical reaction. Vinegar and baking soda are reactants — when you mix them together, they bubble up and make really good lava for a model volcano. Reactants usually hang around the chemistry lab, but the concept isn't difficult if you think about the word react. When people react, they do something such as laugh at a joke or cry at sad news. In chemistry, reactants are part of something happening too: if two chemicals bond when mixed together, or if one dissolves, they are reactants. Any kind of chemical reaction involves reactants.
Vocabulary lists containing reactant
Chemistry - Introductory
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Chemical Reactions - Introductory
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Chemistry - High School
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
"We're looking for alternative ways to excite the reactant molecules to break thermodynamic constraints," Polo-Garzon said.
From Science Daily • Nov. 26, 2024
This process involves destabilizing one of the aromatic rings in quinoline, using light and sometimes a catalyst, so that a reactant can 'latch' onto the ring, forming the target compound.
From Science Daily • Jun. 19, 2024
"If you want to etch silicon while leaving a smooth surface, you should use another reactant than fluorine. It should be a reactant that etches uniformly all crystalline planes," Barsukov said.
From Science Daily • Jan. 9, 2024
Doubling the concentration of a reactant increases the rate of a reaction four times.
From Textbooks • Feb. 14, 2019
"We could always open the reaction chamber and fill that," suggested Astro, indicating the hatch in the floor of the power deck that lead to the reactant chamber.
From Stand by for Mars! by Glanzman, Louis
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
