An Outline of What Computational Chemistry Is All About

Knowledge is experiment s daughter Leonardo da Vinci, in Pensieri, ca. 1492 Nevertheless  

Abstract You can calculate molecular geometries, rates and equilibria, spectra, and other physical properties. The tools of computational chemistry are molecular mechanics, ab initio, semiempirical and density functional methods, and molecular dynamics. Computational chemistry is widely used in the pharmaceutical industry to explore the interactions of potential drugs with biomolecules, for example by docking a candidate drug into the active site of an enzyme. It is also used to investigate the properties of solids (e.g. plastics) in materials science. It does not replace experiment, which remains the final arbiter of truth about Nature. 

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