Quantum mechanics memorization

Quantum Mechanics offers the most comprehensive and most successful explanation of many chemical phenomena such as the nature of valency and bonding as well as chemical reactivity. It has also provided a fundamental explanation of the periodic system of the elements which summarizes a vast amount of empirical chemical knowledge. Quantum Mechanics has become increasingly important in the education of chemistry students. The general principles provided by the theory mean that students can now spend less time memorizing chemical facts and more time in actually thinking about chemistry. 

The result was published in 1939 as The Nature of the Chemical Bond and the Structure of Molecules and Crystals An Introduction to Modern Structural Chemistry. It would become the most important Baker lecture book ever printed, and one of the most-cited scientific texts in history. In a very basic way, this book changed the course of chemistry. For the first time, the discipline was explained not as a collection of facts tied together by practical application in the laboratory but as a field unified by an underlying physical theory Pauling s quantum-mechanical ideas about the chemical bond. By showing how the new physics explained the chemical bond, how those bonds explained the structure of molecules, and how molecules structure explained their behavior, Pauling showed for the first time, as the Nobel Prize-winner Max Perutz said, that chemistry could be understood rather than memorized. ... 

The rules of quantum mechanics have no direct correlation in physical systems much larger than atoms. It s easy to believe that this chapter has nothing to do with real life and is just something else to memorize and forget later. Given a choice (with the instructor out of earshot), some students would argue that the s, p, d, and/classifications for electron orbitals stand for Simply Pure Darn Foolishness. ... 

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