Abstract:
The work described herein was undertaken in order to accomplish two goals. The first was the construction of a mass spectrometer and associated
equipment for use in continually monitoring the kinetics of a chemical reaction in the gas phase. The second was the use of this equipment in the
actual study of the kinetics of a thermal decomposition. The first compound studied was azomethane (McCoy, 1955). The present thesis will cover the
the work on azoethane together with a description of part of the instrumentation.