[dnautics]

it's actually got a lot of problems with it. Preferring strong bonds to weak ones is enthalpy. Entropy is (roughly) "preferring to make m product molecules over n molecules when m > n because the combinatorics of their positions is bigger"

Energy is the total sum of the Entropic and Enthalpic components. (entropy takes a negative sign because more entropy is preferred; less enthalpy is preferred)

The text also doesn't explain what makes for high vs low energy. I'll try to explain this.

An electron is a wave. Two rules to remember: 1) a wave has higher energy when it has more nodes. 2) electrons have higher energy when it spends time 'away' from positive charge. The shapes of these waves are constrained by quantum mechanical rules, but generally speaking a 'higher energy' bond has either more nodes or has more density away from the nuclei.

[nathannecro]

You're certainly correct.

I was just attempting to keep it simple.

[dnautics]

yeah, I'm usually pretty good at explaining things simply, but none of the explanations here are making me happy, and I can't come up with a good explanation that encapsulates my intuition. Perhaps that means that I don't actually understand it very well myself.