SPONTANEITY

 Basically the law of conservation of energy

 energy can be neither created nor destroyed
 i.e., the energy of the universe is constant
 the total energy is constant
 energy can be interchanged
 e.g. potential energy (stored in chemical bonds) can be converted
to thermal energy in a chemical reaction
 CH4 + O2 --> CO2 + H2O + energy
 Doesn’t tell us why a reaction proceeds in a particular
direction

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ENTROPY
 Randomness or disorder of a system
 Increases as temperature increases
 Increases as you increase agitation
 Increases as you add energy to the system

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ENTROPY
 Symbol: S
 A measure of randomness or disorder
 The natural progression is from order to disorder
 It is natural for disorder to increase
 Entropy is a thermodynamic function
 Describes the number of arrangements that are available to a
system in a given state

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ENTROPY
 The greater the number of possible arrangements, the greater the
entropy of a system, i.e., there is a large positional probability.
 The positional probability or the entropy increases as a solid
changes from a liquid or as a liquid changes to a gas.

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