Summary:
- Chemical reactions rarely occur in one simple step.
- The overall balanced equation for a chemical reaction does not always tell us how a reaction actually proceeds.
- An elementary step (or elementary reaction) is one step in a series of simple reactions that show the progress of a reaction at the molecular level.
- A reaction mechanism is the sequence of elementary steps that together comprise an entire chemical reaction.
- As an analogy, consider the route that you might take while driving to the grocery store.
- That route may consist of several turns, similar to the elementary steps.