Showing posts with label energy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label energy. Show all posts

Sunday, July 13, 2008

Day 054: Enthalpy, entropy and (Gibbs free) energy

I thought I would take a break from studying and attempt to blog more. I really do apologize for not blogging as much because this really is the sole means of communication between us so I reiterate, sorry.

Our test tomorrow is math-heavy. A lot of formulas and concepts are tied together. I know them all, it's just a matter of sorting everything into its appropriate little box and then after that, fitting all the boxes together to make a pretty picture.

Just to give you an example (feel free and skip to the next paragraph in case this bores you) ... Enthalpy is the amount of heat given off (or taken) by a system.


Looks like everything is in proper disorder...

Entropy (the amount of disorder/disorganization within the system) relies on enthalpy -- the amount of heat tells us what kind of reaction it is and other cool tidbits. Gibbs Free Energy is a combination of enthalpy and entropy and it tells us how much energy is "free"/left over to do actual work (e.g., how gasoline works/is used in the piston of a car).

I know, it all sounds pretty dry and random but it's pretty cool how everything relates to one another. However, it is also a little overwhelming to have to keep all these concepts and deltaH, deltaS, and deltaG's straight. Much less the different kinds of deltaG. No worries though, I've got a handle on it, just wanted to keep you all in my chemical loop, haha.