Let's Drive 'Driving Force' Out of Chemistry

Abstract

"Driving force" is identified as a misleading concept in analyzing spontaneous change. Driving force wrongly suggests that Newtonian mechanics and determinism control and explain spontaneous processes. The usefulness of the competition of ΔH versus ΔS in discussing chemical change is also questioned. Entropy analyses—which consider the contributions to the total change in entropy—are advocated.

Publisher

American Chemical Society

Publication Date

1-1-2005

Publication Title

Journal of Chemical Education

Department

Chemistry and Biochemistry

Document Type

Article

DOI

https://dx.doi.org/10.1021/ed082p827

Keywords

Natural products

Language

English

Format

text

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