ShmoopTube

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And here's your Shmoop du jour, brought to you by state functions, like the Pennsylvania [People eating pizza at the Pennsylvania pizza party '08]

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Pizza Party of ’08.

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All right, here's the question.

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Which of the following is true regarding state functions?

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And here are your potential answers.

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So if a state function doesn't refer to when all of Ohio goes bowling together, then what [Men at a bowling alley]

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is it?

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Well in the context of thermodynamics, a state function refers to any property that depends

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only on the current state of a system, and not on the path taken to get to that state.

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Sort of like the relief you feel when you finally get back home to New York for Thanksgiving. [Man on a plane and the child seated behind crys]

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Your flight may have been delayed three times, but at least you got there in time for the

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turkey. [Family having thanksgiving dinner]

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So that being said, we can immediately rule out choice B, which says that state functions

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are dependent on path.

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And, similarly, choice D must be incorrect because we now know that choice A is true.

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So let’s check in with choice C.

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Is temperature a state function? [Man walking through a desert]

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Well, does the temperature of a system depend on the path we take to get to that temperature? [Man walks into a snowy, cold terrain]

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No.

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As far as we know, zero degrees Celsius is the same temperature regardless of whether

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we start at a hotter or colder temperature, even though it might not feel like it. [Man standing in the snow]

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Yeah, snow feels a lot colder when you’re coming right out of a Jacuzzi.

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Though why you’d be doing that, we don’t know. [Man in a jacuzzi]

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Anyway, temperature is a state function, so choice C is incorrect.

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Meaning that choice A is the correct answer, regardless of how you came to that conclusion.

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Well, except if you cheated. [Man reading a textbook]

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Academic dishonesty is so wrong it makes everything wrong.

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…Yeah.

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There's logic in there somewhere.

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Don't look too hard for it…

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