ELI5: Explain Like I'm 5

Enthalpy-entropy compensation

When you eat your favorite candy, your body gets energy from it. But when you eat too much candy, your body tries to balance things out by making you feel sick or giving you a stomach ache. This is kind of like enthalpy-entropy compensation.

Enthalpy is a measure of the energy contained in something, like your candy or any other substance. And entropy is a measure of how much that substance is organized or chaotic. Entropy gets higher as things become more disordered.

Enthalpy-entropy compensation basically says that when you add a substance to a system (like your body), its enthalpy and entropy have to balance out. So, if something has a high enthalpy (like candy), there has to be an increase in entropy to compensate for that energy. Otherwise, the system would get too "hot" or "excited."

In the case of eating too much candy, your body tries to compensate for the high enthalpy of the sugar by increasing the entropy (causing you to feel sick or giving you a stomach ache). This is because your body wants to keep a balance between the energy it's taking in and the energy it's using.

So, enthalpy-entropy compensation is all about balancing the energy and disorder in a system. And just like with too much candy, if things get too unbalanced, there can be consequences.