Objectives, physical chemistry class

Once you have your objectives in mind, you must analyze the population of your physical chemistry class in order to plan the accomplishment of your objectives. Most of your students will not become physical chemists. In a career of four decades, 1 worked with hundreds of physical chemistry students. Among these former students, 1 can now identify only a handful of professors of physical chemistry. There are several professors who teach other chemical subjects and a few high-school teachers. Those who work in industry work mostly with organic, analytical, or polymer chemistry. The largest group of my former physical chemistry students is made up of physicians and other health care workers. 

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. 

Cluster compounds are fascinating research objects for many scientists in the fields of complex chemistry, solid-state chemistry, physical chemistry and physics. Syntheses, structures, bond-types, physical and chemical properties make transition metal clusters a unique class of chemical compounds. Although fantastic developments in all areas of cluster research could be observed in the course of the last 10-15 years, it looks as if we could still be at the beginning of an evolution, the end of which is not to be foreseen. 

Not all models are physical or pictorial objects. For example, the Sn2 mechanism is a simple model for a particular class of reactions that successfully explains a lot of chemistry. What all of these things have in common is that they use a set of pre-defined objects and rules to approximate real chemical entities and processes. 

This book testifies to a common belief that the theory of relativity is to be applied to one class of physical objects, while quantum theory is relevant for another class of physical objects. The exceptions are exotic and most often not relevant for a scientist working in physics or chemistry, at least as long as he or she is studying the properties of real materials that could also be of interest to a nonscientist. 

Normally, variables used in physics or chemistry correspond to objects that have a definite degree of complexity or to a class of objects that span a range of complexities. For instance, a position in space is a pertinent variable for a particle or for the center of a star, while distance is a pertinent variable for a system of two particles or twin stars. For a cloud of particles or stars, the average distance is a pertinent variable. Many variables are found under the form of a unique notion, a difference, or a sum (an algebraic average is a sum divided by a number of entities). 

Inorganic chemists understand the term tiuster differently than physical chemists or physicists do. It is no wonder then that the objects designated in these fields as dusters have very different characteristics and that their investigations give rise to quite different concepts and require many diverse methods, both experimental and theoretical. In the following, we will focus our attention on the electronic structures of those metal dusters and metal duster compounds which represent the most important systems in each area. It will become dear that despite their often very different characteristics, the same, or at least rather similar, concepts and methods in theoretical chemistry may be profitably applied to both types of metal dusters. By highlighting both their similarities and their differences, the juxtaposition of these two classes of metal dusters will provide a more ludd view on each of them. 

---