[en] Reaction-rate theory and experiment are given a critical review from the engineers' point of view. Rates of heavy-particle, collision-induced reaction in gas phase are formulated in terms of the cross sections and activation energies of the reaction. The effect of cross section function shape and of excited state contributions to the reaction both cause the slope of Arrhenius plots to differ from the true activation energy, except at low temperature. The master equations for chemically reacting gases are introduced, and dissociation and ionization reactions are shown to proceed primarily from excited states about kT from the dissociation or ionization limit. Collision-induced vibration, vibration-rotation, and pure rotation transitions are treated, including three-dimensional effects and conservation of energy, which have usually been ignored. The quantum theory of transitions at potential surface crossing is derived, and results are found to be in fair agreement with experiment in spite of some questionable approximations involved