Information flows necessity

The theoretical chemistry of a hundred years ago comes across as an exciting, vibrant activity, hotly disputed at the laboratory benches of the leading research schools. By comparison, present-day chemistry has very little by way of an innate theory to stimulate the experimentalist. Instead, the necessity of specialization dictates that theoretical pursuits be performed elsewhere and stimulate chemical research by some two-way flow of information. This cross-fertilization however, has dwindled gradually until it finally disappeared during the latter half of the twentieth century. That is why it is not uncommon today, to find synthetic chemists designing new advanced materials such as nano-structures or superconductors, in blissful ignorance of the basic theories that determine the behaviour of these systems. 

Informations on the porous structure of supports give an idea of the effective diffusivity values, but specifie neither their absolute values nor the direction of their variations. Moreover, the experiments demonstrate the necessity of taking the measurements in an external fluid flow so as to determine the influence of internal convective flux on the value of effective diffusivity. 

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