Equilibrium

last week, i told you about equilibrium, whichis proof, if you ever needed proof, that the universeis trying to mess with us, because even though we think and talk about chemical reactions as being a straightforward process, often times they're also going backwards. at the same time, the reactants are combining to form products like nitrogen and hydrogen to make ammonia, or hydrogen and fluorine to make hydrogenfluoride. the products are also breaking back apartinto the reactants. so there's a sweet spot. one particular ratio of reactants to products where the products form at the same rate that they break down.

when a reaction hits that spot, it's saidto be in its equilibrium state. a bit of a kick in the head. but of course you're not totally at chemistry'smercy; you can tinker with chemical equilibrium byaltering the concentration of the substances and their temperature and if they're gases,the pressure on them. for example, adding pressure to the haberprocess that we use to create ammonia essentially shifts the position of equilibrium, so the result of the reaction is more ammoniabeing produced than nitrogen and hydrogen. but, wouldn't it be a lot more helpful ifyou knew

how much pressure you'd have to add to producethe exact amount of ammonia you needed, or how much hydrogen fluoride it takes torefine a certain volume of gasoline. math, of course, is the way to answer questions like these, so today i'm going to show you some simple, totally non-scary calculations that will helpyou get a handle on chemical equilibrium. [theme music] the first and most important thing you need to do equilibrium calculations is the equilibrium constant. this number is unique for every reaction andrepresents a molar ratio of products over reactants whena reaction is at equilibrium. equilibrium constants are easy to set up buthard to explain,

so let's start with an example using thisobviously fake chemical equation. the capital letters stand for the reactantsand the products and the lowercase letters stand for theircoefficients. the equilibrium constant, or keq, is equal to the product of the molar concentration of the products divided by the product of the molar concentrationof the reactants. each concentration is raised to the powerof its coefficient in the balanced equation. now this is important; we're using the coefficientsas exponents here because we're multiplying all the productsand all the reactants, not adding them like you would do in a balancedequation.

generations of students have messed up test scores by getting this part wrong, but you will not do that. so again, it's the product of the products of the product of the reactants and the coefficients become exponents. actually pretty simple. the square brackets in the formula are usedby chemists to represent molar concentration, or molarity: moles of solute per liter ofsolution. these equilibrium constant equations and theconstants themselves are one of the few places where you don'tneed to write them with every number. just remember to convert everything into molaritiesbefore plugging numbers into the equation. one last thing before we do a calculation:as we learned in the last episode,

a change in temperature changes the positionof equilibrium. therefore, the equilibrium constant is onlytrue for a specific temperature. constants are normally calculated at 25 degreescelsius, which is close enough for most situations, but the temperature should always be mentionedalong with the constant. fortunately for us, chemists have already figured out the equilibrium constants for most common reactions. carbonic acid, for instance, which is basicallyjust carbon dioxide dissolved in water, dissociates to form carbonate ions and hydrogenions. you'll see this reaction again later when we talk in depth about carbon and the planet's carbon cycles. more importantly, right now, the reaction is perfectly reversible with an equilibrium constant of 1.66 x 10^-17.

for this reaction, keq equals the product of the molar concentration of the carbonate ion and the molar concentration of the hydrogenion, which is squared because hydrogen's coefficientin the balanced equation is 2, all divided by the molar concentration ofcarbonic acid. now, let's not be boring and throw a bunchof numbers around. what you need to see is that the quotient on the right must always yield the same number because it's a constant. so, if the amount of co2 in the atmosphere increases leading to more h2co3 in the earth's water, the concentration of carbonate ions and/or hydrogen ions must also increase so the total will match the keq. you should also notice that any change tothe concentration of hydrogen ions

will have a huge effect on the denominatorbecause its square. so an increase in hydrogen ions, like if the water were somehow acidified by an outside source, would require a huge decrease in carbonateions or a huge increase in carbonic acid — carbon dioxide pulled in from the atmosphereto satisfy the equilibrium condition again. we can attack this problem from another direction, too, depending on what information we have to begin with. chemists often know not only the equilibriumconstant for a reaction, but also how much of each reactant is available. and all they need to figure out is exactly how much of each substance will be present at equilibrium. this type of calculation is easiest usinga format called a rice table.

rice stands for reaction, initial, change,and equilibrium. on the r line at the top of the table, wewrite the chemical equation of reaction, leaving space between each part so we'll haveroom to add more information below. on the i line we write the initial concentrationsof each substance. some of those will almost always be zero, since products generally aren't present until the reaction begins. the c line is where we map out how much ofeach substance will change during the reaction. we often don't know exactly how much thisis until we do the math, so we start out with x, where the amount isunknown. the e line is where we put the final result: how much of each substance will be present at equilibrium.

since the final amount is just the initialamount plus any changes that have occurred, this line is the sum of the initial line andthe change line. let's do this for hydrogen fluoride, or hf, an integral part of the process of refining gasoline. it can be formed in the gaseous state by an equilibrium reaction between hydrogen gas and fluorine gas. start by writing the balanced equation. for our initial concentrations, let's use 3.00 mol of h2 and 6.00 mol of f2in a 3.00 liter container at a certain temperature. that makes the initial concentration of h23 moles in 3 liters, or a 1.00 molar solution. similarly, the initial concentration of thef2 is 6 moles per 3 liters, or 2 molar.

no hf has formed yet, so it's initial concentrationis 0. so what we're trying to figure out is howmuch of the hydrogen and the fluorine will react to form hydrogen fluoride underthese conditions. so we'll call the change 'x' for now. since 1 mole of h2 and 1 mole of f2, combineto form 2 moles of hf. we can say that the h2 and f2 will each lose 'x' moles per liter while the hf gains 2x moles per liter. that's on the change line of your table. so that leaves the equilibrium line whereyou write your totals. for h2 we have a total of 1.00 - x molar.for f2 the total is 2.00 - x.

for the hf the total is 2x molar. now we apply these figures to our formulafor the equilibrium constant. based on the table in the back of my textbook, the keq for this reaction is 115 at the given temperature. we plug in the numbers from our rice tableand solve for x. and we end up with this. which you probablyrecognize as a quadratic equation. just so you know that doesn't happen with every equilibrium calculation, but it's an extremely common result. to solve the quadratic equation we have touse the quadratic formula. and to do that we have to think of the coefficientsof our equation as a, b, and c in that order. then we plug them in the corresponding positionsin this formula:

-b +/- the square root of b2 - 4ac, all dividedby 2a. once we finally get all the numbers in theright places, it becomes a matter of grinding through somebasic algebra. and because of the way the quadratic formulaworks, we'll get 2 possible answers. to figure out which one is the right one,think back to the beginning of the problem. i said the initial concentration of the h2 was 1 molar, and the initial concentration of the f2 was 2 molar. and x is the amount that each one lost, right? well neither the h2 nor the f2 could possiblylose 2.13 moles per liter when they both started with less than thatalready.

so clearly, the correct answer has to be 0.968molar. using that then, we can calculate the actualequilibrium amounts for each substance. at equilibrium, under these specific conditionsthe concentration of hf is 2x, or 2 x 0.968,which equals 1.94 molar. the concentration of hydrogen will be 1 - 0.968or 0.032 molar. and the concentration of fluorine will be2 - 0.968 or 1.03 molar. as we learned last week, those values canbe shifted. for instance, to maximize the hydrogen fluoride production by adding or removing some of the substances. or by changing the pressure or temperatureon the system.

that's why these calculations are so valuableto scientists. just a little bit of algebra allows us tomaximize the benefit that we receive from the things that nature is already doing anyway. if the universe really is try to take advantage of us, we've certainly figured out how to take advantage right back. so the next time you're wondering why youlearned this stuff in math class, now you know. thanks for watching this episode of crashcourse chemistry. today you've learned some mathematical tools to help us make more efficient use of equilibrium reactions in real life. you've learned how to calculate an equilibriumconstant, keq. you've learned how to calculate the equilibrium conditions of reactions just from knowing their initial conditions.

and you've learned that a rice table isn'tjust a place where you eat sushi. and you may even have learned a little bitabout the quadratic equation. this episode was written by edi gonzã¡lez.the script was edited by blake de pastino. and our chemistry consultant was dr. heikolangner. it was filmed, edited, and directed by nicholas jenkins. the script supervisor was katherine green. the sound designer is michael aranda. andour graphics team is thought cafã©.

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