What chemical kinetics?

Chemical kinetics refers to the branch of chemistry that deals with how fast and how reactions happen. An example of this is a gold wedding ring that someone is wearing. Believe it or not, that ring is oxidizing right before your eyes (gasoline is oxidized when you light it!). It just happens so extremely slow that you will never see it in your lifetime! So Chem. kinetics deals with:

1. rates of reaction: how fast does a reaction happen? how does increasing one of the reactants affect the rate of reaction? is it the same as increasing a different reactant?

2. mechanisms of reaction: does the reaction go exactly as written? or are there a few sub steps that happen in relatively quick succession? is one of those sub steps the rate determining step that determines the overall rate of the whole reaction?