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Water oxidation is a more complex chemical reaction than proton reduction. ... Without a catalyst (natural or artificial), this reaction is very endothermic, r
by apo 8y ago
Water oxidation is a more complex chemical reaction than proton reduction. ...
Without a catalyst (natural or artificial), this reaction is very endothermic, requiring high temperatures (at least 2500 K).
Water oxidation may well be endothermic, however, catalysts can not change that fact. A catalyst can change the activation energy of a reaction (thereby changing rate of reaction), but can't change a reaction's thermodynamics.
Endothermic reactions can be driven forward by coupling them to one or more exothermic reactions. Biological systems do this all the time. But even this does not change the thermodynamics of a reaction, which merely represents the difference in energy between products and reactants.
Endothermic reactions can also be driven forward by adding energy (in the form of heat, for example).
- namanyayg 8y agoWikipedia is free content that anyone can edit, use, modify, and distribute.
- mywittyname 8y agoThe person who authored the incorrect passage is probably monitoring for changes and may revert the edit.
- namanyayg 8y agoBut what apo says is simply a very clear fact, a catalyst has no effect on thermodynamics but reduces the required temperature here. Would that original author really be incentivized to revert a very clear truth?
- Retric 8y agoRather than arguing about it here, how about you just make the edit and see what happens. It might be as simple as your suggesting and you get to win the argument! Or someone might revert and you lose.
- irrational 8y agoI can't tell if you are serious, joking, or new to the Internet.
- mywittyname 8y agoMy experience with editing wikipedia is that it doesn't matter if you're right. What matters how persistent you are at being heard.
- contingencies 8y agoYes. Adding lots of citations to acronym-laden hand-wavey policies which are vague and open to interpretation is also a great asset.
- patorjk 8y agoIf you feel very confident that you're correct, then you should update the wiki. I'd make it, but I wouldn't feel confident since I don't know much about this subject matter. As a random aside, if you search for that sentence on Google, a journal article [1] appears. It looks like they've copied parts of that wikipedia section verbatim. [1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3858868/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3858868/
- apo 8y agoGood find. It does appear to be copied verbatim. The statement is wrong (in the sense of what it implies) in both the plagiarized article and in Wikipedia.