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Physics for chemists

Loel Barr

While pondering what to write about in this month’s column, I got to thinking about the series of articles we’ve published by Weldon Vlasak on Max Planck and his use of chemistry to make contributions to physics. (The third in the series is in this issue.) Many, if not most chemists—particularly organickers like me—run screaming into the night at the mere mention of physics. Although I enjoyed high school physics, mainly because my teacher, Mr. Burgener, put on cool demonstrations, I’ve always been somewhat intimidated by it—especially modern physics, with its Schrödinger equations and quantum states. When I was an undergraduate, I took only three physics courses, the minimum the chemistry curriculum would allow. And I pretty much limped through p-chem as well.

So when Weldon first approached me last year about doing an article about Planck, I went into a defensive shell. (I can’t remember whether it was a p-shell or a d-shell.) I figured that such a piece would be way too deep for our readers and of little interest to them. But then I read his manuscript and found that it was not only understandable, but also relevant to us benighted practical chemists. I’m looking forward to his fourth contribution later this year.

By coincidence, while I was musing about how chemists deal with physics, I was browsing the latest issue of Science and came across an item titled “Flash-Card Physics” in the NetWatch department (1). (NetWatch is Science’s version of Touring the Net.) The article describes a Web page called HyperPhysics (http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hphys.html), created by Georgia State University (Atlanta) physics professor Rod Nave for the classes he gives for science teachers. It’s basically all you ever wanted to know about physics in 25 (well, maybe 50) words or fewer per topic, organized in flow charts that carry you from the general to the specific. Physics-phobic chemists can drill into it effortlessly, without worrying about tripping over lengthy theoretical tracts.

I wish I had known about this resource while I was editing the Vlasak article. All I had handy were the two textbooks from my undergraduate “modern” physics class a long, long time ago (2, 3). Now, these are extremely authoritative volumes—at least they were at the time they were written—but just try to find a specific piece of information amongst all the derivation equations replete with partial integrals and virtually the entire Greek alphabet. In fairness, however, I must say that one of the texts did contain a marvelously direct statement in the discussion of Planck’s discovery of the blackbody radiation formula: “This was the birth of the quantum theory” (italics theirs) (2 p 124).

It can be argued that physics impinges on chemistry in virtually every CI article. Certainly this is the case with the feature by Zory Todres in this issue. While most of it involves comfortably familiar (at least to me) organic chemistry, the crux of the article—electron memory—is decidedly a physical concept. Maybe it’s all part of a grand scheme to blur the lines between chemistry and physics; after all, who would have thought that there ever would be such a thing as OLEDs? (See June 2001 CI.)

All things considered, I’d rather fall back on Nave’s Cliffs Notes version of physics knowledge. After all, I’m just a poor country organic chemist, and I need all the help I can get.

References

1. Flash-Card Physics. Science 2001, 292, 1027.
2. Richtmayer, F. K.; Kennard, E. H.; Lauritsen, T. Introduction to Modern Physics; 5th ed.; McGraw-Hill: New York, 1955.
3. Eisberg, R. M. Fundamentals of Modern Physics; Wiley & Sons: New York, 1961.