Physical Chemistry at the University of Geneva

The ideal gas equation is an equation of state that relates the state variables pressure, volume, temperature, and the number of moles of a hypothetical gas. This equation is a combination of four empirical laws, namely Boyle’s Law, Charles’s Law, Avogadro’s Law, and Gay-Lussac’s Law. When the proportionalities of the above four empirical laws are combined, it results in a single proportionality constant known as the universal gas constant.

A thermodynamic system is a set of objects whose thermodynamic properties are of interest. The system is considered to be embedded in its surroundings or the environment. The system and its environment can exchange heat and do work on each other through a boundary that separates them. However, the immediate surroundings of the system interact with it directly and therefore have a much stronger influence on its behavior and properties.
Consider an example of  tea boiling in a kettle. The tea and...

Consider the two thermodynamic processes involving an ideal gas that are represented by paths AC and ABC in Figure 1:

The second law of thermodynamics can be stated in several different ways, and all of them can be shown to imply the others. The Clausius’ statement of the second law of thermodynamics is based on the irreversibility of spontaneous heat flow. It states that heat will not flow from the colder body to the hotter body unless some other process is involved. Additionally, as per the Kelvin’s statement, it is impossible to convert the heat from a single source into work without any other effect. This...

Applying the conservation of energy principle or the work-energy theorem to an incompressible, inviscid fluid in laminar, steady, irrotational flow leads to Bernoulli's equation. It states that the sum of the fluid pressure, potential, and kinetic energy per unit volume is constant along a streamline.
All the terms in the equation have the dimension of energy per unit volume. The kinetic energy per unit volume is called the kinetic energy density, and the potential energy per unit volume is...

Physical chemistry is a branch of chemistry that studies the principles from physics underlying chemical reactions. It provides deep insights into the behaviors of molecules, the forces they experience, and their interactions and chemical reactions.The term "physical chemistry" was introduced by Mikhail Lomonosov in 1752. Since then, it has seen significant contributions from notable scientists such as Josiah Willard Gibbs, Wilhelm Ostwald, Jacobus Henricus van't Hoff, and Linus Pauling.Key...