Are all spontaneous reactions exothermic? Are all exothermic reactions spontaneous?
1 Answer
A spontaneous process must have:
...and that's it. This can be accomplished in the following ways (among others), where
where:
Keep in mind that this is a general equation with general entropy; entropy doesn't have to be positive if, say, it's
That aside, taking the third case as an example, if
You've made the reaction spontaneous by doing it at a high temperature, but it's still an endothermic reaction.
Conversely, with:
Example:
and the reaction is exothermic but nonspontaneous.
Therefore, not all spontaneous reactions are also exothermic. Furthermore, not all exothermic reactions are spontaneous.