I started lecture with a demo inspired by the hit TV show mythbusters, in which methane is bubbled through soapy water and is then ignited. A main theme for the duration of the quarter is going to be energy. In the thermodynamics unit we will discuss how to energy relates to the extent of a reaction.
After a brief introduction of thermodynamics on Wed., I discussed what thermodynamics can and can't tell us about a reaction mechanism, and then introduced entropy. We discussed the second law of thermodynamics and I gave some guidelines for the entropy of the universe. We can also associate numerical values with entropy and the third law of thermodynamics allows us to do so by defining the entropy of a pure crystal at 0 K. I also performed an example very similar to what we saw in chapter 5, where we had to calculate the standard entropy of a reaction, which is the exact same method used to calculate the standard enthalpy of a reaction.
In the last 5 minutes I put the Gibbs Free Energy equation on the board because you will need it in lab this week. We will begin our lecture discussion on Monday with free energy.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment