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The concept of chemical equilibrium was developed in 1803, after Berthollet found that some chemical reactions are reversible. [4] For any reaction mixture to exist at equilibrium, the rates of the forward and backward (reverse) reactions must be equal. In the following chemical equation, arrows point both ways to indicate equilibrium. [5]
Equilibrium chemistry is concerned with systems in chemical equilibrium. The unifying principle is that the free energy of a system at equilibrium is the minimum possible, so that the slope of the free energy with respect to the reaction coordinate is zero.
The magnitude of the equilibrium constant depends on the Gibbs free energy change for the reaction. [2] So, when the free energy change is large (more than about 30 kJ mol −1), the equilibrium constant is large (log K > 3) and the concentrations of the reactants at equilibrium are very small. Such a reaction is sometimes considered to be an ...
Partial equilibrium, the equilibrium price and quantity which come from the cross of supply and demand in a competitive market; Radner equilibrium, an economic concept defined by economist Roy Radner in the context of general equilibrium; Recursive competitive equilibrium, an economic equilibrium concept associated with a dynamic program
For this assumption to be valid, equilibrium constants must be determined in a medium of relatively high ionic strength. Where this is not possible, consideration should be given to possible activity variation. The equilibrium expression above is a function of the concentrations [A], [B] etc. of the chemical species in equilibrium. The ...
A central aim in equilibrium thermodynamics is: given a system in a well-defined initial state of thermodynamic equilibrium, subject to accurately specified constraints, to calculate, when the constraints are changed by an externally imposed intervention, what the state of the system will be once it has reached a new equilibrium. An equilibrium ...
The balance of nature, also known as ecological balance, is a theory that proposes that ecological systems are usually in a stable equilibrium or homeostasis, which is to say that a small change (the size of a particular population, for example) will be corrected by some negative feedback that will bring the parameter back to its original "point of balance" with the rest of the system.
Chemistry is the scientific study of the properties and behavior of matter. [1] It is a physical science within the natural sciences that studies the chemical elements that make up matter and compounds made of atoms, molecules and ions: their composition, structure, properties, behavior and the changes they undergo during reactions with other substances.