How far?

Things to learn

The steam engine and the atom gave rise to a branch of science which is a powerful tool for interpreting
what we around us. This is thermodynamics and it can tell us a great deal about why chemical changes
take place.

The first law of thermodynamics tells us that energy can never be created or destroyed.

The second law states that entropy always increases in the transformation of energy.

Entropy can be thought of as a tendency for everything to move from a state of order to themselves mix
and randomize themselves as much as they can.

Entropy is something described as a measure of the order or disorder in a system. The units of
entropy, S, are Jmol-1K-1.

Diffusion represents an increase in entropy because the particles have more disorder. The spreading out of
heat energy represent an overall increase of entropy.

Movement of electron inside atom or movement of molecules involve energy, and the energy for all of
these changes comes in quanta.

If there are two molecules they may exchange energy quanta, so that their energy levels change.

Sharing energy quanta increases the number of energy states, and so the number of ways in which atoms
and molecules can arrange themselves and their energy also increases.
Number of ways of arranging the energy, W =

( N + q1 ) !
( N 1 ) ! q !

; here N represents the number of atoms

and q represents the number of quanta of energy.

Everything always likes to go towards the most stable, or lowest energy state.

The enthalpy change one of the most important factors determining the spontaneity of a reaction.

The other thing that favours a reaction being spontaneous is an increase in the systems entropy.
All reactions that are highly exothermic and lead to great disorder are spontaneous at all
temperatures.
Any reaction that is neither of these is never spontaneous.

If a large amount of energy must be supplied (i.e. a reaction is highly endothermic), the reaction is not
likely to be spontaneous.

The standard molar entropy of the solid is low.

Things to learn
Change in entropy during chemical reactions

The entropy involves both the physical state and the arrangement of particles in a substance.

The entropy of the surroundings, as well as that of reacting system, plays a part and it becomes
even more difficult to predict just what is going on to happen in a chemical reaction.

The basic principles of the direction of entropy change in a reaction:

Ions and molecules usually have higher entropies in solution than they do as solids.

Gases usually have higher entropies than liquids or solids, so if a gas is produced during a reaction it
is likely that the overall entropy will increase.

When large molecules break down into smaller molecules entropy increases. This is because there
are far more ways of arranging several small molecules than one big one.

Calculating entropy changes

Total entropy change determines whether a reaction is spontaneous or not.

Stotal= S sys + S surr
In the case of the reaction of sodium and chlorine, the release of large amount of heat energy into
the universe makes S surr very positive, which is more than enough to offset the negative value
of S sys .

Calculating the total entropy change for a reaction / S sys

S sys= S products S reactants

Calculating S surroundings
S surr = -

H
T , where T is absolute temperature.

We know,
Stotal= S sys + S surr
Or,

T S total= H T S sys (replacing

S surr = -

H
T )
The quantity

T S total is called the Gibbs free energy, or G .

So, the equation can be written:

G= H T S sys

The entropy change of the surroundings depends on temperature, with the transfer of a given quantity
of energy to surroundings at low temperature producing a greater entropy change than the transfer of
the same amount of energy to be surroundings at higher temperature.