What is Physical chemistry?
What is Physical chemistry? Physical chemistry is the study of macroscopic and particle events in chemical systems using physics principles, techniques, and ideas such motion, energy, force, time, thermodynamics, quantum chemistry, statistical mechanics, analytical dynamics, and chemical equilibrium. In opposition to chemical physics, physical chemistry is primarily (but not exclusively) a macroscopic or supramolecular science, as the majority of the concepts upon which it was develop concern the bulk.
Mikhail Lomonosov develop the term “physical chemistry” in 1752, during the lecture entitled “A Course in True Physical Chemistry” to students at Petersburg University. Physical chemistry is the science that must describe what is happening in complicated bodies by chemical operations under the requirements of physical tests, he says in the prologue to these lectures.
In the 1860 and 1880, studies on chemical thermodynamics, electrolytes in solutions, chemical kinetics, and other topics focus to modern physical chemistry. Josiah Willard Gibbs’ paper On the Equilibrium of Heterogeneous Substances, published in 1876, was a watershed moment. Gibbs energy, chemical potentials, and Gibbs’ phase rule were all introduced in this publication as foundations of physical chemistry.
