Question

The transition state can be described as _____ and _____.

A. highly unstable; high in energy
B. highly stable; high in energy
C. highly stable; low in energy
D. highly unstable; low in energy

Answer 1

@matt101 Please help me!

Answer 2

What do you think?

Answer 3

the transition state or activated state can not be a stable state, otherwise the reaction can not occur itself.
furthermore the activation energy, characterizes the transition state

Answer 4

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transition_state

Answer 5

i think the answer is A, look at this graph to understand the concept of energy, clearly, you can see that the transition state is at higher energy from both the reactant (substrate) and the product.
now let's answer the stability, for any chemical process, even in organic chemistry, reactants proceed in a chemical reaction to form stable product, as you already know, now if the transition state was stable the reaction would STOP at that stage and wont proceed to form the product, in other words the product of the reaction would have been the transition stage. but It is NOT so. it means that it's a highly unstable stage.
ANY system in the universe tends to lose energy to gain stability :D

i hope it helped