From owner-biophysics@net.bio.net Thu Feb 12 22:00:00 1998 Path: biosci!agate!logbridge.uoregon.edu!news-peer.gip.net!news.gsl.net!gip.net!news-peer.sprintlink.net!news.sprintlink.net!Sprint!newsfeed.internetmci.com!209.89.75.15!News.Toronto.iSTAR.net!news.istar.net!mars.online.uleth.ca!jeff.oliver@uleth.ca From: Marc Roussel Newsgroups: bionet.biophysics Subject: Re: General question Date: Fri, 13 Feb 1998 12:20:09 -0700 Organization: Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, University of Lethbridge Lines: 16 Message-ID: <34E49CE9.2781@henri.chem.uleth.ca> References: <6c1mmq$rnu$1@bignews.shef.ac.uk> NNTP-Posting-Host: henri.chem.uleth.ca Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Mailer: Mozilla 3.01 (X11; I; OSF1 V3.2 alpha) E Demoncheaux wrote: > Could someone explain the difference between kinetic and thermodynamic > stability? Easily done by example: Diamonds are thermodynamically unstable relative to graphite at standard temperature and pressure which means that their free energy is higher than that of graphite. Thus, every diamond that has ever been dug out of the ground is slowly converting to graphite. (Contrary to the popular saying, diamonds are not forever.) However, diamonds are kinetically stable in the sense that the rate constant for this conversion is immeasurably small. Marc R. Roussel (roussel@uleth.ca) Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry University of Lethbridge .