parameters are independent of each other. While free energy change describes the stability of products relative to reactants, the rate of any reaction is defined by the energy of the transition state relative to the starting material. Depending on these parameters, a reaction can be favorable or unfavorable, fast or slow and reversible or irreversible, as shown in figure 8. A favorable reaction is one in which the change in free energy ∆G° is negative (exergonic) or in other words, the free energy of product, G°product, is less than the free energy of the starting materials, G°reactant. ∆G°> 0 (endergonic) corresponds to an unfavorable reaction. The ∆G° can be written as a function of change in enthalpy (∆H°) and change in entropy (∆S°) as ∆G°= ∆H° – T∆S°. Practically, enthalpies, not free energy, are used to determine whether a reaction is favorable or unfavorable, because ∆H° is easier to measure and T∆S° is usually too small to be of any significance (for T < 100 °C). A reaction with ∆H°<0 is called exothermic reaction while one with ∆H°>0 is endothermic. The relative stability of reactant and product does not define the feasibility of any reaction all by itself. For any reaction to proceed, the starting material must have enough energy to cross over an energy barrier. This energy barrier is known as activation energy (∆G≠) and the rate of reaction is dependent on the height of this barrier. A low energy barrier corresponds to a fast reaction and high energy barrier corresponds to a slow reaction. A reaction is in equilibrium when the rate of forward reaction is equal to the rate of reverse reaction. Such a reaction is said to be reversible. If the starting material and product(s) are in equilibrium then their relative abundance is decided by the difference in free energy between them. In principle, all elementary steps are reversible, but in many cases the equilibrium lies so much towards the product side that the starting material is effectively no longer observable or present in sufficient concentration to have an effect on reactivity. Practically speaking, the reaction is considered to be irreversible. While most reversible processes will have a reasonably small K of 103 or less, this is not a hard and fast rule, and a number of chemical processes require reversibility of even very favorable reactions. For instance, the reaction of an carboxylic acid with amines