Question

Ethylamine gas dissociates to produce ethylene gas and ammonia gas. There is no intermediate. What is the mechanism for this reaction?

Answer 1

I believe the reaction mechanism should simply be the balanced equation of the reaction

Explanation:

The balanced equation of the reaction is :
`CH3-CH2-NH2 to C2H4 + NH3`
Most reaction mechanisms would assume that there are "smaller" reaction steps which when added to each other should give the overall balanced equation,

For example,
`A + 2B to C` could have a reaction mechanism as follows
`A + B to D` where D is an intermediate
`B+ D to C`,
Hence the D cancels out and the two B's add up.

But in your case, we're told there are no intermediates, and the fact that there is only one of each molecule implies that there is only one step to this mechanism.

My assumption is that you wanted a mechanism in relation to chemical kinetics and not the mechanism of organic molecule reactions such as electrophilic/nucleophilic substitution and so on.