DrClaude said:
The key point is the fact that temperature is maintained constant. You can thus see the environment, which is responsible for that temperature being constant, as a heat source or heat sink as necessary.
Entripy has a lot to do with that. But I tried to give you answers without invoking entropy too much as I guessed that you weren't yet completely familiar with it.
Hi thanks for the great reply. Regarding the entropy part, i understand that entropy is a measure of disorder within the system. I watched this youtube lecture:
and there are some parts that i don't understand.
He said that the number of moles n is constant as the mass of the closed system remains constant. I don't quite understand this because if a reaction proceeds like this A+B->C then even though the mass remains constant, the number of moles decreases. Also, even if the number of moles remain constant, like in this equation A+B->C+D if some of the products or reactants are not gaseous, then the ideal gas law can't be used. He explained using PV=nRT then since P, V and n are constants, V must also be a constant. But assuming my 2 possible misconceptions are true, V might actually change.
According to the youtube lecture, it seems that the volume must remain constant for ΔH=Q but I thought the only requirement for ΔH to be equal to the heat transfer is for the external pressure to be constant (I found the derivation for that here
http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20070719190446AArMS7b) which is the case for most reactions as they occur under atmospheric conditions. So again I don't understand the need the volume to be constant for ΔH=Q.
Also, when deriving the Gibbs Free Energy formula, he said that ΔSsurr=-ΔHsurr/T. Would the ΔHsurr=ΔHsys because for the system if 10J of energy goes in then the ΔH would be 10J but for the surrounding, 10J of energy leaves the system so ΔH=-10J?
Lastly, at the final part of the video it was taught that if the -TΔSuni is negative then the reaction would be spontaneous. This makes sense as if -TΔSuni<0, ΔSuni>0 making the reaction spontaneous as stated by the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics. So for this I have 2 parts that i don't quite understand. 1) I don't understand if the entropy of the universe increases, why would it indicate a spontaneous change and 2) How would these variables that determine the entropy change of the universe tell us how much Free Energy there is. Because the way i see this derivation is to determine whether ΔSuni is positive or negative and nothing else. I don't really see how these variables tell us how much energy is available.
For 2) if i were to base the Gibbs Free Energy as hoe it is defined of the amount of energy available to do non expansion work, I'm unsure that if ΔH=-100J and TΔSsys=-10J would that mean in the conditions for Gibbs Free energy where P and T are constant, would there only be 90J of heat being evolved from the system or would there still be 100J of energy evolved. Or would there be 90J of heat evolved and 10J of expansion within the system? If the 10J of expansion is true then would it mean that if my volume, pressure and temperature are kept constant, then there would actually be 100J of energy given out as heat? Again, I still don't really understand why those variables come together and tell me this numbers actually as mentioned in the previous paragraph before this.
Thanks so much for helping me out here and sorry for the long post.