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Constant Heat of Summation

Germain Henri Hess discovered in 1840 that the enthalpy of a chemical reaction is constant regardless of whether the reaction occurs in one or multiple steps, known as Hess' Law. Hess' Law states that the change in enthalpy (ΔH°rxn) of a reaction is equal to the sum of the standard enthalpy of formation (ΔH°f) of the products minus the sum of the standard enthalpy of formation of the reactants. This principle allows chemists to determine the enthalpy change of complicated reactions by breaking them into simpler steps.

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65 views

Constant Heat of Summation

Germain Henri Hess discovered in 1840 that the enthalpy of a chemical reaction is constant regardless of whether the reaction occurs in one or multiple steps, known as Hess' Law. Hess' Law states that the change in enthalpy (ΔH°rxn) of a reaction is equal to the sum of the standard enthalpy of formation (ΔH°f) of the products minus the sum of the standard enthalpy of formation of the reactants. This principle allows chemists to determine the enthalpy change of complicated reactions by breaking them into simpler steps.

Uploaded by

hlvijaykumar
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
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Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Germain Henri Hess, in 1840, discovered a very useful principle which is named for

him:
The enthalpy of a given chemical reaction is constant, regardless of the reaction
happening in one step or many steps.
There is a second way to use Hess' Law and it is usually presented like this:
Hrxn = Hf (products) minus Hf (reactants)
Here's another form in which you see this form of Hess' Law:
Hrxn = Hf, products minus Hf, reactants
The "rxn" above is a common way to abbreviate "reaction." All it means is that we are
discussing the enthalpy of a generic reaction, not any specific one. I'll explain the
above equation using an example problem.

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