Introduction
Understanding the basic equations of chemical equilibrium requires knowledge of thermodynamics. Physical chemistry and thermodynamics may not be familiar to students in the Department of Marine Biology in the Faculty of Fisheries Sciences. However, thermodynamics is the basis for considering metabolism and energy acquisition in living organisms. For example, what energy can be obtained from one mole of organic matter by oxygen respiration in an organism? How much less energy efficient would nitrate respiration be in an anaerobic environment without oxygen? Survival strategies in an anaerobic environment sound interesting. What is oxidative or anaerobic (reducing) in the first place? If you know the basics of thermodynamics, you can answer these questions with calculations.
In textbooks with the name "chemistry" in the title ("Analytical Chemistry", "Hydrospheric Chemistry", etc.), you will encounter words like "free energy" and "enthalpy" in the first chapter. Serious students tend to read the textbook from the first page and try to get through the basics before moving on. However, it is impossible to understand these fundamentals just by reading a textbook on analytical chemistry or hydrospheric chemistry. And so they fail after the first page.
Those who want to move ahead to the point need only memorize and use the conditional equations of chemical equilibrium and the basic equations of electrochemistry. If you are serious but clumsy, take the long way around and choose the path that leads you to the next step after understanding the basics of physical chemistry.
