Physical Chemistry Lesson of the Day – Intensive vs. Extensive Properties

An extensive property is a property that depends on the size of the system.  Examples include

• mass
• volume
• number of moles
• energy
• heat capacity

An intensive property is a property that does not depend on the size of the system.  Examples include

• pressure
• temperature
• concentration
• specific heat capacity
• molar heat capacity
• energy per unit of volume or mass

As you can see, some intensive properties can be derived from extensive properties by dividing an extensive property by the mass, volume, or number of moles of the system.

Physical Chemistry Lesson of the Day – The Difference Between Changes in Enthalpy and Changes in Internal Energy

Let’s examine the difference between a change enthalpy and a change in internal energy.  It helps to think of the following 2 scenarios.

• If the chemical reaction releases a gas but occurs at constant volume, then there is no pressure-volume work.  The only way for energy to be transferred between the system and the surroundings is through heat.  An example of a system under constant volume is a bomb calorimeter.  In this case,

This heat is denoted as to indicate that this is heat transferred under constant volume.  In this case, the change in enthalpy is the same as the change in internal energy.

• If the chemical reaction releases a gas and occurs at constant pressure, then energy can be transferred between the system and the surroundings through heat and/or work.  Thus,

This heat is denoted as to indicate that this is heat transferred under constant pressure.  Thus, as the gas forms inside the cylinder, the piston pushes against the constant pressure that the atmosphere exerts on it.  The total energy released by the chemical reaction allows some energy to be used for the pressure-volume work, with the remaining energy being released via heat.  (Recall that these are the 2 ways for internal energy to be changed according to the First Law of Thermodynamics.)  Thus, the difference between enthalpy and internal energy arises under constant pressure – the difference is the pressure-volume work.

Reactions under constant pressure are often illustrated by a reaction that releases a gas in cylinder with a movable piston, but they are actually quite common.  In fact, in chemistry, reactions under constant pressure are much more common than reactions under constant volume.  Chemical reactions often happen in beakers, flasks or any container open to the constant pressure of the atmosphere.

Physical Chemistry Lesson of the Day – Enthalpy

The enthalpy of a system is the system’s internal energy plus the product of the pressure and the volume of the system.

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Just like internal energy, the enthalpy of a system cannot be measured, but a change in enthalpy can be measured.  Suppose that the only type of work that can be performed on the system is pressure-volume work; this is a realistic assumption in many chemical reactions that occur in a beaker, a flask, or any container that is open to the constant pressure of the atmosphere.  Then, the change in enthalpy of a system is the change in internal energy plus the pressure-volume work done on the system.

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When Does the Kinetic Theory of Gases Fail? Examining its Postulates with Assistance from Simple Linear Regression in R

Introduction

The Ideal Gas Law, , is a very simple yet useful relationship that describes the behaviours of many gases pretty well in many situations.  It is “Ideal” because it makes some assumptions about gas particles that make the math and the physics easy to work with; in fact, the simplicity that arises from these assumptions allows the Ideal Gas Law to be easily derived from the kinetic theory of gases.  However, there are situations in which those assumptions are not valid, and, hence, the Ideal Gas Law fails.

Boyle’s law is inherently a part of the Ideal Gas Law.  It states that, at a given temperature, the pressure of an ideal gas is inversely proportional to its volume.  Equivalently, it states the product of the pressure and the volume of an ideal gas is a constant at a given temperature.

An Example of The Failure of the Ideal Gas Law

This law is valid for many gases in many situations, but consider the following data on the pressure and volume of 1.000 g of oxygen at 0 degrees Celsius.  I found this data set in Chapter 5.2 of “General Chemistry” by Darrell Ebbing and Steven Gammon.

               Pressure (atm)      Volume (L)              Pressure X Volume (atm*L)
[1,]           0.25                2.8010                  0.700250
[2,]           0.50                1.4000                  0.700000
[3,]           0.75                0.9333                  0.699975
[4,]           1.00                0.6998                  0.699800
[5,]           2.00                0.3495                  0.699000
[6,]           3.00                0.2328                  0.698400
[7,]           4.00                0.1744                  0.697600
[8,]           5.00                0.1394                  0.697000

The right-most column is the product of pressure and temperature, and it is not constant.  However, are the differences between these values significant, or could it be due to some random variation (perhaps round-off error)?

Here is the scatter plot of the pressure-volume product with respect to pressure.

These points don’t look like they are on a horizontal line!  Let’s analyze these data using normal linear least-squares regression in R.