CY352 Physical Chem. II

Physical Chemistry is the sub-discipline of science that seeks to explain and interpret chemical phenomena. This is
accomplished by first assuming that chemical behavior is governed by a finite number of scientific laws. The job of the
physical chemist is to discover and understand these scientific laws.  A knowledge of this ‘complete set of rules’ will
enable chemist to make predictions about chemical behavior in previously untested systems. Such predictive power can
greatly benefit humankind; for example, chemist will no longer be restricted to the mere discovery of novel cancer and
AIDS drugs or environmentally friendly industrial and consumer products, but can instead develop these substances
from first principles.

Physical chemists are often classified as working in one of two categories. The first group consists of the experimentalists,
who design laboratory experiments in an effort to probe the fundamental behavior of chemical systems. The second group
consists of theoretical or computational chemists, who develop theoretical models that explain or predict the data collected
by the experimentalist. Working together, the experimentalist and theoreticians have already made much progress in
understanding the chemical world. The second semester of physical chemistry involves a detailed treatment of the 
spectroscopic aspects of quantum mechanics (vibrational, rotational and nuclear magnetic resonance) and also the topics 
of group theory and statistical mechanics.

Useful Links and JAVA Applets.

1)   National Institute of Standards and Technology - Chemistry Webpage (Thermodynamic data).
2)   Mathcad documents for physical chemistry (site maintained by Theresa Zielinski).
3)   WebElements (a web-based periodic table).
4)   Ideal Gas Simulator.
5) SI Base Units - Standards.
6) Units Conversion - Online Megaconverter 2.

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