Free Energy

Have you ever acted spontaneously? You may have completed some action as result of a sudden inner impulse without planning. The spontaneity of chemical reactions at a specific temperature was first predicted by a Yale physics professor named J. Willard Gibbs in the early 1800s. Gibbs related the enthalpy of a system to its entropy. This relationship is better known as Gibbs free energy. In this topic, you will explore Gibbs free energy and learn how to determine the spontaneity of a chemical reaction.

Essential Questions

• How can you calculate Gibbs free energy when given the enthalpy and entropy?
  
• How can you use Gibbs free energy to predict spontaneity?