ON KINETICS OF CLASSIC PARTICLES - MEAN-VALUES OF STATE FUNCTIONS

An axiomatic outline is presented of a kind of kinetics often met in the study of, say, metabolic and ecologic systems. One of the purposes is to get some rather established concepts and principles in a coherent and concise form. An additional purpose is to obtain a basis for definition of mean values of state functions, which turn out to be both experimentally and theoretically useful concepts. Some relations between different kinds of mean value are proved and establish statistical relations between different particle populations. The approach is probabilistic but the analysis is, in general, deterministic. Only first moments are considered and probability theory is used for its conceptual value only. For instance, general kinetic equations can be derived without any references to underlying physical and chemical mechanisms. These equations, as well as other relations that are obtained, retain their significance no matter how complex and heterogeneous the physico-chemical structure may be. © 1993 Academic Press Limited.