In the Germany/Terrorism/Merkel thread, someone cited Merkel’s degree in Quantum Chemistry.
Would someone please explain to this knuckle dragging mouth breather what Quantum Chemistry is? Please use small and easily understood words, plain language, and perhaps an illustration of the field’s real-world application.
Thank you in advance. I am dumb.
Wouldn’t dare to try to answer that one.
But it sounds like an undergraduate degree in brain surgery.
A little fishy!!
But who knows?
Those East German Cold War science programs might have been pretty intense.
How original. I did Google it first. Still makes no sense. As I wrote, “I am dumb.”
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Its a bit of a misnomer to separate quantum physics from chemistry. At the subatomic level they are the same thing just of two different flavours (10 Nerd points for making a quark joke).
Its basically about how quantum aspects at the sub-atomic level can be extended into our macro (molecular) world. Some application examples are Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Imaging which uses powerful magnetic fields to stimulate different (quantum) states in H atoms, or the development of quantum computers which will expand us beyond the simple semiconductor, binary world.
Its a bit of a misnomer to separate quantum physics from chemistry. At the subatomic level they are the same thing just of two different flavours (10 Nerd points for making a quark joke).
Its basically about how quantum aspects at the sub-atomic level can be extended into our macro (molecular) world. Some application examples are Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Imaging which uses powerful magnetic fields to stimulate different (quantum) states in H atoms, or the development of quantum computers which will expand us beyond the simple semiconductor, binary world.
Ok, thanks. So, Quantum Chemistry is essentially studying Quantum Physics at the smallest level so that we can cause a desired effect “up the chain” in a sense? I.e., learning how to tweak things at the subatomic level so the things that are made of said tweaked subatomic particles do what we want them to do? Or are we not tweaking things, and are instead trying to better understand how subatomic particles behave so that we can take better advantage of them and of the things they comprise?
Ok, thanks. So, Quantum Chemistry is essentially studying Quantum Physics at the smallest level so that we can cause a desired effect “up the chain” in a sense? I.e., learning how to tweak things at the subatomic level so the things that are made of said tweaked subatomic particles do what we want them to do? Or are we not tweaking things, and are instead trying to better understand how subatomic particles behave so that we can take better advantage of them and of the things they comprise?
It’s been a long time since my QM courses, but not quite. Quantum Chemistry is not Quantum Physics at the “smallest level”. It’s Quantum Physics at the scale (space and time) that’s appropriate for chemistry - the interactions between atoms and molecules. So as wiki says, “It is also called molecular quantum mechanics.”
A proton has a size of about a femtometer. That’s a rough spatial scale for quantum chem. But quantum physics can extend down to much finer scales, e. g. the Planck length (related to “quantum foam”) about twenty orders of magnitude smaller. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planck_length
In the context of Chemistry, quantum mechanics governs the interactions between atomic nuclei and electrons that are responsible for covalent chemical bonds. Since chemistry is fundamentally about how such bonds break & reform to make new molecules, application of quantum mechanics allows, in principle, detailed computer simulations of reaction mechanism, reaction rates, etc. Such methods are generically referred to as ‘computational chemistry’ and play a huge role in many fields of pure & applied chemistry. (As the poster above pointed out, quantum physics will extend to length scales much smaller than that of chemical bonds.)
Beyond chemical reactions, per se, the electronic structure of molecules (and materials more generally) also is directly responsible for many important properties. For instance, quantum methods would be used to try to understand/predict the electronic properties of organic semiconductor materials for printable electronics applications.
Computational chemistry, as Wesley mentioned, is also used in the pharmaceutical business of drug discovery to model small molecule interactions with proteins and binding pockets. I suspect this is often more accessible than obaining a crystal structure for each of several compound series under consideration for potential drug scaffolds.
The nuclear magnetic resonance Guffaw posted about is used on small scale to help deduce or confirm molecular structure of a compound. On larger scale it’s the MRI’s that are used in diagnostic medicine.
Super excited to talk chemistry in the LR! If only more of the gen pop gave a crap… :-/
after reading this thread…
i do so love it here thought due to the variety and depth of the topics.
good peoples here. good peoples.
Happy Thanksgiving folks.