Chemical potential

Okay kiddo, let's talk about something called chemical potential. You know how everything around us is made up of tiny things called atoms? Well, those atoms can stick together to make larger things, like molecules.

Chemical potential is how much potential energy (kind of like how much energy something has in it) a substance has based on how its atoms are put together.

Imagine you have a toy box with all of your toys inside. Now, imagine you take all of your Legos and put them in one corner of the toy box. If you wanted to build something with Legos later, you would have to take them out of that corner and put them back into the bigger space of the box.

This is kind of like how chemical potential works. Imagine the toy box is a substance and the Legos are the atoms. When the atoms are all in one place, they have more potential energy because it's harder to move them around. When they are spread out, they have less potential energy because it's easier to move them around.

So, chemical potential is a measure of how much potential energy a substance has based on where its atoms are located. It's kind of like how easy or hard it is to move the toy Legos around in your imaginary toy box.