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Entropy is a measure of the disorder of a system. Take your room as an example. Left to itself,
your room will increase in entropy (i.e., get messier) if no work (cleaning up) is done to contain the disorder. Work must be done to keep the entropy of the system low. Entropy comes from the second law of thermodynamics, which states that all systems tend to reach a state of equilibrium. The significance of entropy is that when a spontaneous change occurs in a system, it will always be found that if the total entropy change for everything involved is calculated, a positive value will be obtained. Simply, all spontaneous changes in an isolated chemical system occur with an increase in entropy. Entropy, like temperature, pressure, and enthalpy, is also a state property and is represented in the literature by the symbol "S". Like enthalpy, you can calculate the change of S (ΔS).
Δ S = S final - S initial or Δ S = S (products) - S (reactants)
Where:
ΔS is change in entropy
Sfinal and Sinitial are the final and initial entropies, respectively.
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Friday, April 30, 2010
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