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7.8: Chapter Summary

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    83097
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    To ensure that you understand the material in this chapter, you should review the meanings of the following bold terms in the following summary and ask yourself how they relate to the topics in the chapter.

    Energy is the ability to do work. The transfer of energy from one place to another is heat. Heat and energy are measured in units of joules, calories, or kilocalories (equal to 1,000 calories). The amount of heat gained or lost when the temperature of an object changes can be related to its mass and a constant called the specific heat of the substance.

    The transfer of energy can also cause a substance to change from one phase to another. During the transition, called a phase change, heat is either added or lost. Despite the fact that heat is going into or coming out of a substance during a phase change, the temperature of the substance does not change until the phase change is complete; that is, phase changes are isothermal. Analogous to specific heat, a constant called the heat of fusion of a substance describes how much heat must be transferred for a substance to melt or solidify (that is, to change between solid and liquid phases), while the heat of vaporization describes the amount of heat transferred in a boiling or condensation process (that is, to change between liquid and gas phases).

    Every chemical change is accompanied by an energy change. This is because the interaction between atoms bonding to each other has a certain bond energy, the energy required to break the bond (called lattice energy for ionic compounds), and the bond energies of the reactants will not be the same as the bond energies of the products. Reactions that give off energy are called exothermic, while reactions that absorb energy are called endothermic. Energy-level diagrams can be used to illustrate the energy changes that accompany chemical reactions.

    Even complex biochemical reactions have to follow the rules of simple chemistry, including rules involving energy change. Reactions of carbohydrates and proteins provide our bodies with about 4 kcal of energy per gram, while fats provide about 9 kcal per gram.

    We often use the generic term "energy" but heat, work, enthalpy (H), and Gibbs free energy (G) are related and have the same units. Reactions with negative changes in energy (going down) are more likely proceed spontaneously to products. The speed of reactions (kinetics) is determined by the height of the activation energy barrier between reactants and products. Larger activation energies result in slower rates of reaction. Reaction rate can be increased with higher temperature, higher concentration of reactants, or presence of a catalyst.

    Reactions can go both forward and backward in a process called equilibrium. The equilibrium constant, K, gives the ratio of products to reactants that will exist when the forward and reverse rates are equal. A large value for equilibrium constant (K >> 1) indicates that the reaction goes far to the right before reaching equilibrium, and thus favors products. Equilibrium and energy change are related. Reactions with large K-values are exergonic (ΔG < 0).


    7.8: Chapter Summary is shared under a CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 license and was authored, remixed, and/or curated by LibreTexts.

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