Why does decrease of temperature increase spontanity of a reaction?

Join the discussion
Ask a follow-up here, or get your own question answered by working scientists, mathematicians and engineers — people, not an autocomplete.
Real named experts · corrections over time · the nuance an AI answer skips
2 replies · 4K views
sameeralord
Messages
659
Reaction score
3
Hello everyone,

I always though when reactants are heated up, there are more collisions and more like a reaction is to take place. However this is not the case for spontaneous reaction according to Gibbs equation. Why is that? Thanks :smile:
 
Chemistry news on Phys.org
I'm not sure how you've reached this conclusion. At constant temperature and pressure, reactions with a negative value of [itex]\Delta G=\Delta H-T\Delta S[/itex] are spontaneous. Since the entropy of a reaction can be positive or negative, we can't say anything absolute about the influence of temperature on spontaneity.
 
Not true, it all depends on the relative magnitudes (and signs) of the enthalpy and entropy terms. Here's a video I found a while back; it does a pretty good job of explaining the equation in intuitive terms.

 
Last edited by a moderator: