Biochemistry Chapter 1

First law of thermodynamics

The change in internal energy of a system is equal to the heat added to the system minus the work done by the system

Since biochemical processes occur at constant pressure and have negligible changes in volume, the change in energy of the system is nearly equivalent to the change in enthalpy

The Boltzmann equation relates the number of microstates to entropy.

The second law of thermodynamics states that spontaneous processes are characterized by an increase in entropy of the universe

The spontaneity of a process is determined by its free energy change as calculated by the Gibbs free energy equation