The Chemical Potential/particle Number Pair
The chemical potential is like a force which pushes an increase in particle number. In cases where there are a mixture of chemicals and phases, this is a useful concept. For example if a container holds water and water vapor, there will be a chemical potential (which is negative) for the liquid pushing water molecules into the vapor (evaporation) and a chemical potential for the vapor, pushing vapor molecules into the liquid (condensation). Only when these "forces" equilibrate is equilibrium obtained.
Read more about this topic: Conjugate Variables (thermodynamics)
Famous quotes containing the words chemical, potential, particle, number and/or pair:
“We do not want actions, but men; not a chemical drop of water, but rain; the spirit that sheds and showers actions, countless, endless actions.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Children are potentially free and their life directly embodies nothing save potential freedom. Consequently they are not things and cannot be the property either of their parents or others.”
—Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831)
“Standing on the bare ground,—my head bathed by the blithe air, and uplifted into infinite space,—all mean egotism vanishes. I become a transparent eye-ball; I am nothing; I see all; the currents of the Universal Being circulate through me; I am part and particle of God.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Among a hundred windows shining
dully in the vast side
of greater-than-palace number such-and-such
one burns
these several years, each night
as if the room within were aflame.”
—Denise Levertov (b. 1923)
“To get a man soundly saved it is not enough to put on him a pair of new breeches, to give him regular work, or even to give him a University education. These things are all outside a man, and if the inside remains unchanged you have wasted your labour. You must in some way or other graft upon the man’s nature a new nature, which has in it the element of the Divine.”
—William Booth (1829–1912)