3. consider the following 'experiment'. a beaker containing 1000 black beads and 1000 white beads is mixed. the beads are identical except for their c colour. the potential energy of the beads on the_2

The mixing of 1000 black beads and 1000 white beads, where the change in enthalpy is zero, can be spontaneous due to an increase in entropy. Although the potential energy of beads on the left and right is identical, mixing causes an increase in the disorder or randomness of the system. Entropy, a thermodynamic quantity, tends to increase in spontaneous processes because the number of possible arrangements of the beads increases when they are mixed compared to when they are segregated. This increase in entropy drives the mixing process even in the absence of an enthalpy change. The entropy of mixing arises from the greater number of microstates available when the beads are mixed, leading to a spontaneous process purely driven by the entropy increase.