Chemical Principles/Will It React? An Introduction to Chemical
Equilibrium And so, nothing that to our world appears, Perishes
completely, for nature ever Upbuilds one thing from another's
ruin; Suffering nothing yet to come to birth But by another's
death. Lucretius (95-55 B.C.) The main question asked in Chapter
2 was "If a given set of substances will react to give a desired
product, how much of each substance is needed?" Our basic
assumptions were that matter cannot be arbitrarily created or
destroyed, and that atoms going into a reaction must come out
again as products. In this chapter we ask a second question:
"Will a reaction occur, eventually?" Is there a tendency or a
drive for a given reaction to take place, and if we wait long
enough will we find that reactants have been converted
spontaneously into products? This question leads to the ideas of
spontaneity and of chemical equilibrium. A third question, "Will
a reaction occur in a reasonably short time?" involves chemical
kinetics, which will be dis