Sunday, May 30, 2010

Its all about entropy (again)

Tomorrow's lecture is on chemical equilibrium. A few key ideas are:
  • chemical reactions never proceed to completion because of the entropy of mixing
  • the equilibrium constant quantifies how far the reaction proceeds.
  • measuring its temperature dependence allows one to determine the enthalpy change of the reaction. (and consequently also the entropy change).
Some cool videos I show are from the Chemistry Comes Alive series produced by the Journal of Chemical Education. These include lots of good ones on thermodynamics and phase transitions.

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