Today we ended with our review of equilibirum thermodynamics. We introduced the concept of osmotic pressure and applied it to cell membranes. Moreover, our approach to that problem allowed us to introduce open systems. Thus, we saw how the free energy must be modified to include the contribution of mass changes. According to this we defined the so-called chemical potential. Equilibrium properties are related with the balances of the chemical potentials and this led us to the mass action law. In addition we discussed how equilibrium is reached and deduced the differential equations that govern that process. Finally, we discuss the concept of thermodynamic standard and concluded that in biophysics a standard that takes into account the fact that pH~7 must be defined: the biological standard. Unfortunately today we didn't (I didn't) have enough time to comment on the paper (the integrins one), we will do that in the next class on wednesday (READ IT, STUDY IT!!) and we will also start discussing (if we have time) non-equilibrium thermodynamis.
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