It involves making rapid changes to the pressure of an experimental system and observing the return to equilibrium or steady state.
Ultra fast pressure drops can be achieved using electrically disintegrated burst membranes.
[8] The ability to automatically repeat measurements and average the results is useful since the reaction amplitudes are often small.
When a single step in a reaction is perturbed in a pressure jump experiment, the reaction follows a single exponential decay function with the reciprocal time constant (1/τ) equal to the sum of the forward and reverse intrinsic rate constants.
The ability to observe intermediate steps in a reaction pathway is one of the attractive features of this technology.