Catalysis Symbol

Lalit A Patel

Arithmetic has four arithmetic operations and four corresponding symbols: addition (+), subtraction (-), multiplication (*), and division (/).

Chemistry has a special type of reactions, known as catalysis. Chemicals A and B are said to undergo catalysis by chemical C if they produce some other chemicals D and E but the chemical C is recovered in the reaction:

A + B + C = D + E + C

We now often talk about loading some hardware R with some software S. The software-loading process changes the hardware R into T but retains the software S:

R + S = T + S

We can say that the software acts like a catalyst in a software-loading reaction.

Let us now introduce a catalysis symbol (@) defined as follows:

(A + B) @ C = D + E means A + B + C = D + E + C

R @ S = T means R + S = T + S

The catalysis symbol has several advantages:

It would simplify the symbolization of software-loading reactions, and reduce often-used erroneous symbolization as R + S = T.

It would prompt research into catalysis reactions by treating them as an arithmetic operation.