Thermodynamics has established in chemistry principally as a science determining possibility and direction of chemical transformations and giving conditions for their final, equilibrium state. Thermodynamics is usually thought to tell nothing about rates of these processes, their velocity of approaching equilibrium. Rates of chemical reactions belong to the domain of chemical kinetics. However,...

The data on average hadron multiplicities in central A+A collisions measured at CERN SPS are analysed with the ideal hadron gas model. It is shown that the full chemical equilibrium version of the model fails to describe the experimental results. The agreement of the data with the off–equilibrium version allowing for partial strangeness saturation is significantly better. The freeze–out tempera...

Spiropyran (SP) mechanophores (mechanochemically reactive units) can impart the unique functionality of visual stress detection to polymers and have potential for use in smart materials with self-sensing capabilities. These color-generating mechanophores were incorporated into polyurethane via step growth polymerization. Polyurethane, which is inherently a versatile engineering polymer, possess...

The equilibrium composition of a mixture of reacting molecules is essential to many physical and chemical systems. The computation of chemical equilibrium is generally thought to be challenging, and, as such, only simple ideal cases are introduced in textbooks. We show that the computation of chemical equilibrium in closed systems can in general be formulated as a convex optimization problem, l...

Article history: Received 11 May 2014 Received in revised form 21 October 2014 Available online 24 December 2014