How temperature affects K

[Maayan Epstein 14B]

Why does changing temperature change the equilibrium constant K, but changing pressure, heat, and concentration does not?

[ian_haliburton_1f]

I am fairly certain that this has to do with principles of thermodynamics that we will study later in the course.

[Kim Tran 1J]

Temperature permanently affects the rate constant of the forward and reverse reactions. Increasing/decreasing the temperature would add/remove heat changing the rate of collision of molecules of the whole reaction.

But for changes in pressure, heat, or concentration, the system eventually will return to equilibrium over time as when products/reactants are added the reaction will shift to produce more or less of what is needed to keep the ratio of products to reactants the same as the initial equilibrium.

[Maayan Epstein 14B]

Thank you Kim for your response! Super helpful.
Do you know why heat and temperature are not treated in the same way in terms of how they affect equilibrium? It seems like both heat and temperature would affect the rate that the molecules hit each other.

[Phan Tran 1K]

Don't quote me on this, but I vaguely recall from high school chemistry that temperature measures the activity level of the particles in a substance while heat measures the energy they give off. I'm probably wrong since my memory is shoddy, and I'm sure we'll learn about this more in detail later on in the course.