Upon the Optimal Graphical Representation of Flash Data From Photochemical Systems Obeying First Order Kinetics

It is recommended that plots of absorbance change vs. log time be considered as a way to represent many decades of flash spectroscopy data when several separate decays are present. The values of the rate constants k, for the decays are easily revealed by nearly linear portions of the plots centered near tj=k−1j, which are inflection points in the graphs. The amplitudes of the decays are easily seen because they are proportional to the slopes of the linear portions of the plots. Such plots introduce no spurious singularities and they are easy to construct using semi‐log paper. Examples, including one from bacteriorhodopsin, are presented. A simple mathematical proof of these features is provided.