Analysis of the experimental orientation dependence of the reaction CH3I+Rb→RbI+CH3

Experiments by Parker et al. (1981), deconvoluted for the precession effect by Stolte et al. (1982), yielded the dependence of reaction probability upon the ‘‘angle of attack’’ γ for the CH3I+ Rb reaction. Inversion of these results is carried out via the kinetic theory model of reactive collisions of rigid nonspherical molecules of Evans et al. (1985), yielding the angle dependence of the activation barrier as well as an estimate of the colliding-pair anisotropy (asphericity) parameter.