Syllabus for Physical Chemistry I

Course Outline:

  1. A short discussion on the relevance of Physical Chemistry to everyday life
  2. Math Review
    1. Complex Numbers
    2. Vectors
    3. Operators
  3. The Classical Wave Equation
  4. The Schrödinger Equation
    1. Probability and Statistics
    2. More on Operators, Eigenvalues & Eigenvectors
    3. The Particle in a Box
    4. The Uncertainty Principle
    5. Multi-dimensional problems
  5. Postulates & Theorems of Quantum Mechanics
    1. ψ (The wave function tells us everything about the system).
    2. Operators represent classical variables
    3. Observable quantites are eigenvalues of Operators
    4. The Time-dependent Schrödinger equation
    5. Eigenfunctions of Quantum operators are orthogonal
    6. Commuting operators = simultaneuously measurable quantities
  6. The Harmonic Oscillator
    1. Hooke's law and bond stretching
    2. Energy levels of the Harmonic Oscillator
    3. Hermite Polynomials
    4. Vibrational Spectroscopy
  7. Angular Momentum
    1. Spherical Coordinates
    2. Energy levels fo a Rigid Rotator
    3. Legendre Polynomials
    4. Rotational Spectroscopy
  8. The Hydrogen Atom
    1. Spherical Harmonics
    2. Energy levels fo a Rigid Rotator
    3. Orbitals
    4. Confirmation of things you learned in General Chemistry
  9. Approximation Methods
    1. Determinants
    2. Matrices
    3. Variational Method
    4. Perturbation Theory
    5. Gaussian Basis Sets & Computational Quantum Chemistry
  10. Molecules
    1. Born-Oppenheimer Approximation
    2. Molecular Orbital theory
    3. The Pauli Exclusion principle
    4. SCF-LCAO-MO
    5. Electronic Spectroscopy
    6. Hybrid orbitals
  11. Spectroscopic methods
    1. The Franck-Condon Principle
    2. Molecular Symmetry
    3. Review of Ro-vibrational Spectra
    4. Selection Rules
    5. Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (hitting a piano with a sledgehammer to see what notes it used to play)
    6. Lasers
    7. Photochemistry