What is the catalytic principle of a catalyst?

What is the catalytic principle of a catalyst?
The essence of catalysis is this: chemical reactions occur at different rates over different catalysts.
A catalyst can either facilitate or inhibit a reaction.
The three main properties of a catalyst are (1) catalytic activity (2) specific reaction selectivity (3) inherent stability. If you want to discuss any catalyst, you can’t get away from these three properties. It is a more systematic work when all of them are discussed clearly].
Electrons can be used as “reactants”, but that’s what charge transfer reactions are all about. See Marcus Theory.

Oh, By the way, a lot of catalysts become completely unrecognizable after a few “catalyzes” (we’re currently working on such a material in our group to figure out what’s going on in it). So catalysts are not “static”. And if there are toxic species in the reaction (e.g., CO, etc.), then it will poison the surface of the catalyst. Surface remodeling is common in nanoparticle catalysts and electrocatalysts. (But at the high school level, the textbook is the main focus)
Science is a very sophisticated and complex machine, and should be approached with admiration. Cheer up!
Figuring out the role of a catalyst in catalyzing a reaction is about as confusing as figuring out what’s going on in a girl’s mind.
Happily, however, through the efforts of scientists who have gone before and after us, we have a tentative understanding of parts of the principle of catalysis.
To figure out the role that a catalyst plays in a catalyzed reaction (which is the question in your title), the following foundations have to be figured out beforehand:

(1) How to describe the interactions in chemical bonds/reactions (van der Waals, electrostatic interactions, electric field-dipole coupling, etc.) [If you want to understand this from a mathematical, physical point of view, you have to learn quantum mechanics, then quantum chemistry, then solid state physics, energy band theory to really have an understanding of the changes involved. It is highly recommended to learn about the Anderson-Newnes Model as well as the
The purpose of this theory is also easy to understand: it is to find a number to help us rank the catalysts, and if the ranking according to the size of the number can be consistent with the conclusions obtained from the experiment, then we can calculate the corresponding “number” of a catalyst to understand its catalytic activity. This is of course very rough, and there are many other details that we should take into account.

(2) Mechanism of a chemical reaction (how this chemical reaction occurs). For this piece of content, you can look at the transition state theory (Erying’s), Marcus Theory (physics is very important, and math is also very good for high school students to understand), as well as the NEB method in DFT, to see how to explore the journey of the reaction through the new theoretical methods (if you are interested in this book, you can check the book “Fundamentals of Heterogeneous Catalysis”). Heterogeneous Catalysis”).]