Predict the sign of ΔS_sys for each of the following processes: (b) Gaseous Cl₂ dissociates in the stratosphere to form gaseous Cl atoms.

Video transcript

Hey everyone, we're asked, what is the sign of the change in entropy of our system? One hydrogen gas dissociates to form hydrogen atoms first. Let's go ahead and write out our reaction here. So we have our hydrogen gas and this is going to dissociate into our hydrogen atoms. And in order to balance this out, we would add a coefficient of two prior to our hydrogen atoms. And as we've learned in previous lessons, a change in entropy that is greater than zero means that our entropy increases and a change in entropy that is less than zero means our entropy decreases. So looking at our reaction, we can see that we had an increase in the number of gas molecules and because we have an increase in the number of gas molecules, this means that we had an increase in entropy. So our answer here is going to be our change in entropy of our system is going to be positive and this is our final answer. Now, I hope that made sense. And let us know if you have any questions