Content Focus

Students investigate factors that initiate and drive a reaction. They examine the relationship between enthalpy and entropy in calculating the Gibbs free energy. They also examine the roles that enthalpy and entropy play in the spontaneity of reactions. Students are provided with opportunities to understand that all chemical reactions involve the creation of new substances and associated energy transformations, which are commonly observable as changes in temperature of the surrounding environment and/or emission of light.

Students conduct investigations to measure the heat energy changes that occur in chemical reactions. They describe reactions using terms such as endothermic and exothermic, and explain reactions in terms of the law of conservation of energy. They use Hess’s Law to calculate enthalpy changes involved in the breaking and making of bonds.

Working Scientifically

In this module, students focus on developing questions and hypotheses to analyse trends, patterns and relationships in data in order to solve problems and communicate scientific understanding of ideas about the driving forces in chemical reactions. Students should be provided with opportunities to engage with all the Working Scientifically skills throughout the course.

NSW Education Standards Authority (NESA) (2017, updated January 2018), Chemistry Stage 6 Syllabus, p. 43.

Biblical Perspective

Enthalpy, endothermic reactions and exothermic reactions show a basic uniformity to nature: the same laws should apply over extended periods of time.  Otherwise no predictions are possible.  Christianity supplies a basis for such observed regularity: God, in His covenant with Noah after the Flood (Genesis 9), promised the regular flow of times and seasons, until the time comes for a new heaven and a new earth.  God has not just started off the universe and then left it to fend for itself; rather, He is continuously upholding His creation, as shown in Colossians 1:15-17, where it is clear that in Christ "all things consist" and "all things were created through Him and for Him."