what is Q10?

Following on from my previous post, Biologists actually prefer to know the factor by which the rate increases for every 10 degrees increase in temperature.

So, a Biologist might say that 'the Q10 for this reaction is 2' - what this means is that for every 10 °C increase in temperature, the rate of the reaction increases by a factor of two i.e. doubles.

Now, if we are dealing with Q10 rather than k, this means our equation above needs to be re-written slightly to take this into account:

All that we have done is write Q10 instead of k, and divided the temperature difference by 10 to take into account the fact that we are interested in the factor by which the rate increases for every 10 degrees increase in temperature.