Learning Goals

Learning Goal:

You will need to review Chapter 6 to have a good background for studying this chapter. The topics in this chapter allow us to considerably expand our understanding of the thermodynamics of chemical events. You will understand the meaning of entropy, see how to apply it to an understanding of the preferred directions of chemical events, and understand why philosophers often refer to entropy as "time's arrow". You will then be introduced to the second law of thermodynamics and some of its applications. Then you will see how one combines the energy and the entropy effects to a system and how the directionality of a chemical process can be determined by the use of this combination. Finally, you will see how these new thermodynamic concepts couple with the equilibrium constant for a very useful relationship.

Chapter Highlights:

Read the material from the text (pages 938-939).

Overview Web Activity:

Here are some excellent sites for some tutoring in some of the topics in this chapter:

Entropy

All Topics