Chemical Reactions and Information

Chemical reactions do not substantially alter information in the statistical sense at the macroscopic scale. If sparse information is allied with p, V, and T when A owns the container, the same applies after equilibrium has been established with B. There is little uncertainty encountered by the chemist prior to measuring any number of state quantities. The microscopic scale is another story, however. 

Chemical Thermodynamics and Information Theory with Applications 

An electrical contact happens because two molecules move accidentally, and more or less independently, toward the same territory. As the motion is thermally powered—and thus random—the likelihood of a party vying for a particular spatial region is proportional to its mole fraction. Thus for an A,B mixture, the probability of each particular type of binary collision is proportional to the products of mole fractions, namely, 

The Shannon information is obtained in the usual way from summing weighted logarithmic terms. There are three different message events and thus terms in the summation. One has 

FIGURE 7.8 Information versus equilibrium constant. A single maximum is observed. Data pertain to the A,B reactions discussed in the text. 

---

The equilibrium constant approach is based on Equation (4.6), and it is useful if the chemical reaction is relatively simple, involving a small number of gaseous and solid species. This method requires a knowledge of all chemical reactions and information of species involved, including all the species, chemical reaction paths and their corresponding equilibrium constants. 

---