{"id":223067,"date":"2025-10-08T04:25:31","date_gmt":"2025-10-08T09:25:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/10\/how-order-and-disorder-direct-chemical-reactivity"},"modified":"2025-10-08T04:25:31","modified_gmt":"2025-10-08T09:25:31","slug":"how-order-and-disorder-direct-chemical-reactivity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/10\/how-order-and-disorder-direct-chemical-reactivity","title":{"rendered":"How order and disorder direct chemical reactivity"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/how-order-and-disorder-direct-chemical-reactivity.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>In nature, the behavior of systems\u2014whether large or small\u2014is always governed by a few fundamental principles. For instance, objects fall downward because it minimizes their energy. At the same time, order and disorder are key variables that also shape physical processes. Systems\u2014especially our homes\u2014tend to become increasingly disordered over time. Even at the microscopic level, systems tend to favor increased disorder, a phenomenon known as an increase in so-called entropy.<\/p>\n<p>These two variables\u2014energy and entropy\u2014play an important role in <a href=\"https:\/\/phys.org\/tags\/chemical+processes\/\" rel=\"tag\" class=\"\">chemical processes<\/a>. Processes occur automatically when energy can be reduced or entropy (disorder) increases.<\/p>\n<p>Under standard conditions\u2014such as in a glass of water\u2014water autodissociation is hindered by both factors, making it a highly unlikely event. However, when strong electric fields are applied, the process can be dramatically accelerated.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In nature, the behavior of systems\u2014whether large or small\u2014is always governed by a few fundamental principles. For instance, objects fall downward because it minimizes their energy. At the same time, order and disorder are key variables that also shape physical processes. Systems\u2014especially our homes\u2014tend to become increasingly disordered over time. Even at the microscopic level, [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":427,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19,1497],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-223067","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-chemistry","category-energy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/223067","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/427"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=223067"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/223067\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=223067"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=223067"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=223067"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}