The thermal dissociation of ethane has been examined in two complementary sets of shock-tube exper-iments that together cover 1400–2200 K and a pressure range of 70–5700 torr. These experiments used both laser-schlieren and UV absorption of CH 3 as diagnostics. In addition, that ethane exhibits a double vibra-tional relaxation has been confirmed for high temperatures, demonstrating slow IVR in this molecule, and both relaxation times have been determined for 1000–1500 K. Some estimates of dissociation incubation times were possible over about 1900–2100 K. An RRKM model calculation using the earlier Klippen-stein–Harding theoretical model provides a remarkably accurate description of the complete range of data with AEDEae down = 120 (T/300) 0.9 cm À1 . Over 1400–2200 K, the k 1 from this model is 8.03 · 10 28 T À3.52 exp (À95346 cal/mol/RT) s À1 . It is suggested that the success of this model shows that there is no non-RRKM behavior in this reaction.