Abstract
While the analysis so far has treated the first and second laws separately, obviously in a real system both energy conservation and entropy play a role. Furthermore, the role of entropy in determining the spontaneous direction of a system was derived for an isolated system that exchanged neither energy nor material with its surroundings. There are few biological systems of interest that fulfill the requirements of this isolation. What is necessary then for dealing with biological systems is a state variable that will indicate the direction and equilibrium position of a system that undergoes radical changes in energy (usually measured as enthalpy) and entropy together. Such a state function has been derived and is the Gibbs free energy, G.
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© 1990 Springer-Verlag New York, Inc.
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Bergethon, P.R., Simons, E.R. (1990). Free Energy. In: Biophysical Chemistry. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4612-3270-4_5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4612-3270-4_5
Publisher Name: Springer, New York, NY
Print ISBN: 978-1-4612-7943-3
Online ISBN: 978-1-4612-3270-4
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