Java applets for CHEM 201 Ð Physical Chemistry
Residential School: April 14 - 17, 2004
Quantum Mechanics Lecture/Tutorial - Wednesday April 14
Why do we impose on you all this
mathematical stuff? This QuickTime
movie provides some justification for what seems like a pointless exercise at
times.
View the Milky Way at
10 million light years from the Earth.
Then move through space towards the Earth in successive orders of
magnitude until you reach a tall oak tree just outside the buildings of the
National High Magnetic Field Laboratory in Tallahassee, Florida. After that, begin to move from the
actual size of a leaf into a microscopic world that reveals leaf cell walls,
the cell nucleus, chromatin, DNA and finally, into the subatomic universe of electrons
and protons.
The Maxwell-Boltzmann
Distribution
The Maxwell-Boltzmann
distribution is an important scientific principle which describes how energy is
distributed in a system. This module and rather nice Java applet will provide
you with several different ways to understand the Maxwell-Boltzmann
distribution.
from Atkins & de Paula (7th Ed), Chapter 11
These are Java applets that accompany your
text, and include:
Particle
in a one-dimensional box
Particle
in a two-dimensional box
Radial
Wavefunctions of Hydrogenic Atoms
(DonÕt forget there are ÒLiving
graphsÓ for Chapters 1-10 as well at this site)
Simulates the energy
density spectrum for a blackbody, as a function of temperature. How hot is Òred hotÓ? How about Òwhite hotÓ?
A variety of Maths and Physics applets
These
are some applets written by Paul Falstad to help visualize various concepts in
maths and physics. Particularly
useful are:
Hydrogen Atom Applet that
shows the orbitals (wave functions) of the hydrogen atom, and the
1-D Quantum
Mechanics Applet that
shows single-particle quantum mechanics states in one dimension.
Mark's Quantum Mechanics
Applets
This is a collection of Java applets illustrating quantum
mechanical processes, written by Mark Sutherland at the University of
Toronto. You should explore:
The simple harmonic oscillator
The infinitely-deep square well
This is quite a comprehensive set of notes,
each page contining several applets.
Although much of the material is beyond the scope of this course, you
should spend some time exploring these pages.
This applet
from MIT displays selected atomic and molecular orbitals, calculated from the
wave function. The data for each orbital was prouced by a Monte Carlo process.
A coordinate was chosen at random, and the orbital's probability function was
calculated for that coordinate. If the probability calculated for that point
was greater than a random number chosen from the range 0 to 1, the point was
selected, otherwise it was skipped. The process continued till 5000 points were
found. Orbitals up to 4f are
available, as well as a number of the more common hybrid orbitals used in
chemistry.
Vibration-Rotation
Spectroscopic Simulator
This applet
from Carnegie-Mellon University covers an aspect of physical chemistry that
students often find confusing: the appearance of a vibration-rotation spectrum
for a diatomic molecule, based on spectroscopic constants for the two vibrational
states involved in the transition.
Atomic Quantum Mechanics
Applet
This is the ultimate applet for quantum
mechanical calculations on atoms.
Click on an atom in the periodic table, and it will calculate Ð in real
time Ð a highly accurate electronic wavefunction for the atom (or related ions
if you wish). Output is energy
levels for the various atomic orbitals, as well as a plot of radial densities
for each orbital.
Laundry: A Quantum Mechanical
Approach
It has been argued that the act of doing
laundry followed the discovery of clothing by only a few weeks. While this fact has been regarded to be
fantastically trivial, one can not ignore the enigmas that the act of doing
laundry has created. This is
especially true in the age of high speed washers and dryers. In the early days, the disappearance of
articles of clothing could simply be accounted for by saying that the sock was
lost in the river. Unfortunately, such excuses can no longer be used
today. The availability of high
speed automated washers and dryers has provided a number of fundamental questions
that can not be answered using the classical laundry theory. Such questions include:
á
Where, exactly does lint come from and
why does the quantity of lint change from load to load?
á
If the washing machine is a closed
system, how can socks disappear?
á
When using public washing machines and
dryers, why is it that every once in a while you will find someone else's socks
in your load even when you checked the washer/dryer ahead of time?
This link provides a simple introduction to
the quantum theory of laundry.
Electron Band Structure in Germanium
An example of how not to write up your prac
reports!