activation energy

1. 1.

   the energy that an atomic system must acquire before a process (such as an emission or reaction) can occur

   “catalysts are said to reduce the energy of activation during the transition phase of a reaction”

   Synonymsenergy of activation

   Broaderenergy

Questions about activation energy

What does activation energy mean?

activation energy means "the energy that an atomic system must acquire before a process (such as an emission or reaction) can occur".

What is another word for activation energy?

Close synonyms include energy of activation. Each sense on this page lists its own synonyms, because a word with several meanings rarely has one substitute that works for all of them.

Is activation energy a common word?

activation energy is banded "Rare" — specialist or archaic — most readers will not have met it. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.