Goals physical chemistry class

A physical chemistry instructor is faced with a number of decisions the goals and objectives of the course, the level of presentation, the choice of textbook, what topics to include, the sequence of topics, the balance between fundamentals and applications, the amount of homework to assign, the use of classroom time, and so forth. Of the students in the class, only a small fraction might intend to become physical chemists. The physical chemistry instructor must make his or her decisions in this context. 

The microscopic understanding of the bonding between atoms is an important goal in a variety of fields of physics and chemistry. This is self-evident in theoretical chemistry, where a basic problem is the calculation of the total energy of different molecular states as a function of geometry. Total energy calculations, however, also provide an essential ingredient in the solution of an important class of problems in solid-state physics. 

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