Spontaneous Reactions [ENDORSED]

[Emma Ward 2C]

Can someone explain to me how to determine if a reaction is spontaneous or not? Super confused

[Lucian1F]

We haven't gone over how to calculate whether or not a reaction is spontaneous. The examples Dr. Lavelle gave in lecture were obvious examples like how gas would spontaneously expand in its container and it would never spontaneously bunch up in its container, but for more ambiguous processes there are calculations for spontaneity that we haven't gone over yet.

[skalvakota2H]

One way to determine this would be to observe if the entropy of the system increases. This is because all processes naturally seek to increase in entropy. In the case that the entropy decreases, this means that the process could not have occurred in the real world without intervention. Thus, spontaneous reactions will have an entropy increase, and non-spontaneous reactions will not.

We can tell if entropy increased if there is a phase change, increase in temperature, or heat was released to the surroundings.