mississippichem

What's the point of modeling at all in a non-quantitative manner? The math is there to ensure universal, homogeneous, and exact understanding between scientists. There is no other way to communicate that is not in some way subjective or imprecise. You simply don't understand that understanding the mathematical workings of a system is knowing the system, and is a model even more prefect than a prosaic description. Even if you could understand the workings of quantum mechanics or an physical science at all without math what good would it do? Well how fast is the baseball moving?...fast...how fast?...really fast! This problem gets exponentially worse when dealing with complicated systems that are beyond the scale of human experience. It is very anthropocentric of you to expect the universe to work in a way that you can easily understand. I could explain some of this stuff to you, but first you need to know about gradients, matricies, eigenfunctions and so on. The system we are dealing with just requires that level of technical understanding. I couldn't build a rocket. I don't know the first thing about engineering, other than mathematics. It would be quite silly of me to demand that an engineer explain to me how to build a rocket. I would first have to go learn some basic principles of engineering. Same scenario here. It is silly to even hint at the notion that physical science is purposefully designed to be cryptic or hard to understand. Once you understand it, then you are in a position to propose changes and point out grievances. I'm not positing an appeal to or from authority here either. I'm just saying that you don't understand, and will not understand until you understand more. Note that my use of "understand" three times in a sentence is intentional.

dot product, ab=ba

[math] \sigma_x \sigma_p \ge \frac{\hbar}{2}. [/math] The Heisenberg uncertainty principle doesn't state that one can't know anything about the position or momentum of an electron. It only means that the greater certainty one has in its momentum, the greater the uncertainty in it's position. One can be quite certain of an electron's position [to a point], but they will be quite uncertain of its momentum. More mathematically [the best way to examine this], the product of the uncertainty in momentum and uncertainty in position can never exceed never be less than half of the that funny looking "h" depicted above, the reduced Planck's constant. Quantum mechanics is more often than not counter-intuitive. There is rarely a clean classical analogy that "makes sense". Just know that, as ajb stated, quantum mechanics has endured the experimental test of fire and passed with flying colors. EDIT: for accuracy

I think it depends on how you define discovery. Chemist around the world chug out thousands of novel [previously undiscovered or synthesized] compounds each year. It is so common place that many undergraduates in large university departments already have two or three novel compounds under their belt prior to starting a PhD. I've got two as a last semester senior. But then again, these "discoveries" aren't all that triumphant when the big picture of the way humans do science is considered. Me synthesizing a new methyl derivative of some anti-cancer drug doesn't affect the way ajb thinks about lie groups. Where as some discoveries and ideas like relativity, the first sequenced protein, or the advent of spectroscopy have super far reaching effects that alter the way everyone thinks about science. There are discoveries, and there are "textbook-changing" discoveries.

I like the sodium chloride example because it is simple. Water, being such a polar molecule is allowed coordinate the charged sodium or chloride ions. The water molecules form what is called a solvation shell. Remember that water also has two lone pairs of electrons mostly residing on the oxygen atom. If some less polar, yet still lone pair containing solvent is added, water can donate hydrogen bond interactions to that solvent. One can see how this disrupts the structure of the solvation shell. Water molecules now have two things on their agenda (to use a grossly cheesy personification); coordinate to charged ions, and interact via-hydrogen bonds with the co-solvent. This reduces the number of available water molecules that can contribute to solvation shells. One important thing to consider is that the co-solvent must be at least somewhat miscible with the other solvent. Recrystallization techniques are often employed on solutions that are already near saturation (maximum amount of solute is dissolved). So if only a small amount of the other solvent is added, that can "distract" enough water molecules to force percipitation. If this happens rapidly enough, the ions will form into a low entropy, highly ordered lattice known as a crystal. To get the crystal, the particle size (and therefore particle surface coulombic potential) must grow rapidly enough to force other ions out of their solvation shells. Some impurity molecules will not be allowed into the crystal on steric or symmetry grounds, which is what makes this a powerful purification technique. Hope this helps.

If everyone farmed organically, global food production would be significantly reduced, further exacerbating the already pretty rough problem of world hunger. Natural is not always better, there is nothing inherently good about things that come from nature. Billions of dollars of research go into agricultural science that has increased global food productivity significantly since the industrial revolution. It is actually quite mind boggling that so many people think that taking farming methods back to circa 1500 is a good idea. Besides, what is organic anyway? Is there something different about the carbons in the biomolecules of "organic" corn than "non-organic" corn, I think not. I'm willing to intake a few ppt of some pesticide than take my chances with botulism.

for a reaction: [ce]nW + mX -> aY + bZ[/ce] [math] K = \frac{[Y]^{a}[Z]^{b}}{[W]^{n}[X]^{m}} [/math] You can just treat the numbers of moles like they are molarities because if you don't know what the compounds are; solubility obviously isn't an issue. The proportions will still work out the same. You can find the amount of "D" formed very easily. After you get that, the equilibrium constant is just plug and chug.

Talk about muons and its particle physics. Stick a muon between two nuclei, evoke the Born-Oppenheimer approximation for a Hartree-Fock method and it's physical chemistry . Funny how science works.

What about them? There are many factors to consider.

Oh, sorry! Didn't realize someone was trying to conduct this reaction at home! I should have read the thread more thoroughly. I would certainly never endorse the use of methyl iodide in the home [please irreversibly alkyate my DNA! ], and this would make the Monsanto process a terrible idea for the "garage chemist"; not even to mention the cost and instablility of the Rh(I) catalyst. I thought we were just speaking theoretically here. Sorry again. However, in the name of futile speculation. I imagine that acetic anhydride could be produced industrially via the Monsanto process in the manner that you mentioned [which might I add is quite creative], or some of the acetic acid produced normally could be distilled off, reacted with thionyl chloride to give the acyl chloride and recombined with the outflow of acetic acid to give the anhydride in almost quantitative yield. Especially if the temperature was set to where the produced acetic anhydride was leaving the liquid phase as it was formed, driving the equilibrium in the spirit of the Dean-Stark trap. I would like to hear a chemical engineer's comments on this though...insane alien, care to weigh in?

I would say that pre-life began as soon as a chemical system was able to selectively cut itself off from from its surroundings and maintain a state of dynamic non-equilibrium. This could be as simple as an RNA molecule getting trapped inside a lipid micelle with an internal ionic strength different from the surrounding bulk water. This would allow pre-biotic molecules to exist in strange non-native conformations and things like that. I would call that life as soon as said chemical system was able to propagate itself, metabolize and catabolize external nutrients, and pass on information with some degree of consistency to the next generation. You should do some reading on the RNA world hypothesis, which if I remember correctly, is at the forefront of our understanding of the origins of life. A short summary: RNA served as a catalyst as well as a carrier of genetic information before the advent of the more stable DNA.

A just made a quick chemical literature search for muonic atoms and muonic molecules. The only chemistry I can seem to find are spectroscopy experiments were a muon is introduced into the outermost n-level then an emission spectrum is taken. I only took about five minutes to search but it seems that the muon decays shortly after. I also found some useless but interesting computational studies of high-Z purely muonic atoms. The consensus seems to be that muonic molecules have trouble forming because the muons don't last long enough for the bond to fall down through the vibrational cascade after a spin pairing event.

I wonder if the Monsanto Process might be altered to produce acetic anhydride rather than acetic acid.

There are many varieties of inorganic polymers such as poly-siloxanes (perhaps the most boring chemistry possible), or poly-titanocene. I go to a school with a large materials chemistry department so I get forced into listening to boring polymer chemistry seminars .

That is most definitely a scam. There is no way to supply enough energy to overcome the repulsion of electrons or nuclei between atoms with electrolysis. You might want to consider a different project, or maybe something else to do with fusion that doesn't involve producing fusion yourself. I think you will have trouble producing muons without a large budget. If no muons, then you will need a massive laser or some type of fission device to reach the temperatures required to cause fusion. Your projected cost outlook is surely over a few million dollars. I don't know about you, but I can't afford that .

The English language wasn't designed with Quantum mechanics in mind. Nobody here is trying to reduce everything to equations, that's just the way things have to be. I wish some things could be explained with some simple analogy, but the fact is that many things in science cannot. Especially in quantum mechanics where the whole subject is quite counter intuitive. If we could explain the behavior of atoms and particles with classical mechanics then we wouldn't need quantum mechanics at all.

Careful, molarity isn't the same things as the number of moles. Molarity is the number of moles of substance in a solution divided by the volume of the solution. Molarity is a concentration unit while moles are a "count unit". [math]molarity = \frac{ moles}{sln. volume}[/math] [math]moles= \frac{mass}{MW}[/math] where "MW" is the molecular or atomic weight per 1 mole.

I'm also a chemistry tutor, and let me tell you; there are too many reactions out there for you to memorize. You are much better off learning the best method to figure out reactions; pushing curly arrows. In my undergraduate organic classes the teachers required that we show curly arrow notation on some reactions. Now that I'm about to graduate, they've got me working on some more difficult stuff like combinatorial synthesis, or organometallic catalytic cycles. I can't imagine being able to understand these things or especially be able to write them down without curly arrows. Biochem as well; I never could memorize the Edman Degradation so I use my chemical sense and push arrows around. Hey, it really works. It's up to you. I imagine you can learn reactions however you like, but all the chemistry people here recommend curly arrows.

I would hardly call the definition of imaginary numbers "tiny semantics". It is in fact very relevant to the quantum mechanics you seem so interested in. But yes, spin physically exists. Don't think of it as a classically spinning object though, because it isn't. Just know that every electron can take on one of two spin values that are equal in magnitude and opposite. If you truly want to understand spin, you must take on the mathematics that are required for everyone else to understand it.

The same thing happens if you react fairly concentrated HCl with aluminum foil (product is [ce]AlCl_3[/ce]). The solution becomes opaque grey due to the alloyed [non-aluminum] metals in the foil. If you wait a while, the non-dissolved impurities will settle out to the bottom. I like John Cuthber's idea of sticking a strong magnet next to flask overnight though. It would be interesting to see if you pick up any iron chips.

The angular momentum manifests itself as different orbital shapes: The electrons have the angular momentum:[math] (n-1)\hbar [/math] Also, the angular momentum quantum numbers that are allowed are all the whole number values from [imath] n-n [/imath] to [imath]n-1[/imath]. So for an [imath]n=2[/imath] orbital, values for *[imath]m_{\ell}[/imath] (angular momentum number) are [imath] n-2=0[/imath] (a sphere), and [math] n-1=1[/math] (two "dumbells"). One can loosely see, by inspection, that these orbitals are all in a series of harmonics and that angular momentum increases as we go up the harmonic series. One can also see that in the Rydberg atoms that swansont mentioned (where "n" is quite large) there are many available angular momentum states, which is getting more and more similar to the classical world we are familiar with. EDIT: [math] \ell [/math] quantum number not [math]m_{\ell}[/math]

You vary the concentration of reactants while holding the other reactant concentrations constant. If you double the concentration of a reactant and there is no change in observed rate, then the reaction is zero order with respect to that reactant giving an [math] [X]^{0} [/math] term in your rate equation of the form: [math] r=k[X]^{n}[Y]^{m}[Z]^{l} [/math] If doubling that concentration doubles the rate, then the reaction is first order with respect to that reactant. If the rate increases by a factor of 4; then second order. You could also compare your results against those predicted by the order specific integrated rate laws derived as follows from a differential rate law: [math]-\frac{d[X]}{dt}=-k_{1}[X][/math] [math]\frac{d[X]}{[X]}=-k_{1} dt[/math] [math]\int\frac{d[X]}{[X]}=\int-k_{1} dt[/math] [math]ln[X]=-k_{1}t+r_{0}[/math] *where r_0 is the instantaneous initial rate This is the derivation for a first order process but the others are similar. You can always find these rate laws already integrated for you though. I just enjoy the process.

You could calculate it from the enthalpy of reaction, heat capacity, and some thermal conductivity parameters. The temperature will be different for different locations within the medium though. I know it's at least above the melting temperature for iron which is about 1811 K as per wikipedia.

Well, the mechanism of the reaction are the steps that both molecules must take in order to react with each other making a transition state and possibly an intermediate that will eventually degrade to the products. What method are you currently using to investigate the order of reaction? Are you using the doubling of concentrations method? With this method, concentrations of various reactants are varied by a known stoichiometric amount, the quantitative effect on the rate is observed. Another method is to plot concentration versus time and find the shape of the resultant line. Zero order reactions give a linear plot with slope of [imath]-k,[/imath]. First order reactions give a linear plot when time vs. [imath]log[conc.][/imath] is plotted with a slope of[imath] -k[/imath]. Second order reactions give a linear plot with a slope of [imath] k [/imath] when time vs.[imath]\frac{1}{[conc.]}[/imath] is plotted. As far as adding the indicator at the last step. I don't know why because I don't know enough about your procedure, please explain further.

Isopentyl Acetate is a great ester to hyrdrolyze at home. It is an easily hydrolyzable ester that has a very distinct "banana" smell. So when the smell begins to disappear, you know that your ester is bring hydrolyzed. I recommend this or something similar as the often the limiting factor in conducting organic chemist at home is not having any spectrometers or HPLC to analyze products with. Inorganic chemistry often gives you color cues, organic chem is often not so kind to the home experimenter.