No such thing as a free lunch, just Gibbs Free Energy!
This is a nod to J. Willard Gibbs, who happens to have a birthday today. I’d get him a cake, but he’s been dead for 105 years.
Not only was he awarded the first Ph.D. in Engineering in the United States, but he also is the Gibbs in Gibbs Free Energy, G, a key concept used in the work for my dissertation.
Gibbs described it as the “available energy”, the amount of energy free to do work given the conditions internal energy, U, pressure, p, volume, V, temperature, T, and entropy, S:
The greatest amount of mechanical work which can be obtained from a given quantity of a certain substance in a given initial state, without increasing its total volume or allowing heat to pass to or from external bodies, except such as at the close of the processes are left in their initial condition.
Looking at the change in Free Energy, you can determine if the change in the system is going to be spontaneous (ΔG<0) or not (ΔG>0).
And tomorrow is Darwin’s birthday!
