Chemistry · 13. Fundamental Equilibrium Concepts

13.4Shifting Equilibria: Le Châtelier’s Principle

Section · module m71835

What this needs

Learn these first — this section will not make sense without them.

  • Predicting a volume-change shift means substituting a scaled pressure like 3P into Qp and simplifying (3P)^2 = 9P^2 to see whether the scale factor cancels — the NO2/NO/O2 example only shows a net shift because the exponents on reactant and product sides differ, which is invisible without exponent rules.

  • Le Châtelier's concentration-stress reasoning is really rational-function monotonicity: adding reactant grows the denominator of Qc so Qc falls below Kc, removing product shrinks the numerator so Qc falls — the chemistry names the shift, the algebra names why a rational expression moves that way.

What this touches

Algebra that turns up here. Not a blocker, but this is where you will see it used.

No algebra turns up here. Most of the descriptive sections need none.