exothermic and endothermic reactions. I honestly dont get it at all. I looked it up and still couldn’t find a clear answer for me.
In: Chemistry
When you have a reaction, bonds are broken and remade – for example, when you burn wood, what is happening is the fuel is reacting with oxygen, and in breaking the bonds of the fuel and combining carbon with the oxygen in the air to make carbon dioxide, more energy is being released than is being put in – so this is an exothermic reaction, fire.
An opposite example is dissolving ammonium chloride into water, in this reaction you have to put more energy into the reaction to dissolve the ammonium chloride, this energy is taken from the surroundings, the heat is absorbed and the reaction feels colder, it is endothermic.
So in a reaction that puts out more energy, usually as heat, but also sometimes light, is exothermic.
In a reaction that takes in more energy, and therefore makes its surrounding environment cold, it is endothermic
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