Why is keq unitless?

1 Answer
Sep 6, 2016

Good question. Consider the equilibrium:

A+BrightleftharpoonsC+D

Explanation:

Now here, of course K_"eq"=([A][B])/([C][D]), which of course is unitless because the mol*L^-1 cancels out. But of course not all equilibria are set up like that, we could conceive of, A+BrightleftharpoonsC, where the units would not cancel out.

Strict application of thermodynamic principles relies on activities, a, not concentrations, where the activity is dimensionless by reference to a standard concentration, i.e. a_A=[[A]]/[[A_"standard"]].

Thus when we use the Nernst equation DeltaG^@=-RTln(K_"eq"), we can properly take the logarithm of a dimensionless quantity.

So in summary, we should use dimensionless "activities", however, the A_0 values should be near as dammit to the molar concentration.