Abstract
The “escaping tendency,” notion due to the American scientist G.N. Lewis, is the tendency of a substance to leave its thermodynamic state by either a physical or a chemical process. Firstly, the content of the chapter shows the analogy of the equilibrium distribution of the matter with the thermal one which may exist between two bodies. Secondly, it also shows that the escaping tendency is closely related to the decrease of the Gibbs energy of the studied system which commands the spontaneous process at constant pressure and temperature.
Actually, in order to study the course of a chemical reaction from the thermodynamic standpoint, it is convenient to relate the criterion of the decrease of the Gibbs energy (and of its cancelling at equilibrium) to the chemical properties of the reactants and products of the studied reaction. In the case of ideal gases, it is shown that it is their molal Gibbs energy which is the essential property in the domain. The part played by the molal Gibbs energy in the case of ideal gases induces the introduction of the chemical potential in order to play this part in every kind of system. In addition, the chemical potential is nothing but a particular molal Gibbs energy. Actually, it will be further mentioned in the book that, in turn, the chemical potential induces the introduction of the notions of the auxiliary functions that are the fugacity and the activity for the study of nonideal systems.
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Burgot, JL. (2017). Escaping Tendency. In: The Notion of Activity in Chemistry. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-46401-5_3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-46401-5_3
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Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-46399-5
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-46401-5
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