What is K? (A Mind-Map Style Explanation)

As I had mentioned in the introductary post to this blog, I had a real hard time figuring out what "K" meant until it was finally revealed to me. Even then, I pretty much didn't have the right answer until I took the professor's advice and made a flowchart of what "K" actually is. Here below is a hand-drawn mind-map of K, and represents much of what we learned in Chem II. I apologize in advance for the sloppy penmanship. Part of the assignment required that I write it by hand, rather than make the chart on computer.

Click on image for the Large Version

As you can see, K, as it applies to most of second semester inorganic chemistry, is a thermodynamic constant, and is largely the distilled essence of everything from solubility to electrochemistry, and most points in-between. Despite the fact we were, throughout the semester, educated on the values of Kc, Ka, Ksp, and many other constants, they all are simply different aspects of K. The value in learning this is in finding out exactly how a constant comes into being. I'm sure most of you by now have encountered the Ideal Gas Constant, or Faraday's Constant, Coulomb's Constant. or even Avogadro's Number, and wondered "that's great, and all, very useful stuff to know, but how do these constants come about in the first place?"

Unlike the ones I mentioned, K is a dynamic constant, in that it is not a number that will always be the same. It changes depending on the values fed to it, but the formula, the product of the concentration of right-hand side of the equation, divided by the product of concentrations of the left-hand side of the equation, helps us to understand where constants come from. In these instances, we are developing our own constants each time. It is through this process we begin to unlock the methodology that the giants before us used to establish the static constants (the numbers that are always the same) by applying very much the same principles, using slightly more advanced math, and many, many trials.

This concept was at first so frustrating for me, and later so inspirational, that it resulted in the creation of this blog, and hence, the name, The Daily Constant. It helps us each to remember that it is you who hold the future of scientific breakthroughs in your hand, not those who came before you. They hold the past, but it is up to you to come up with the constants others will use for ages to come, and to unlock the knowledge and additional mysteries it brings.