Recent content by bearcharge

Thank you for the suggestions. I was trying to understand how it is derived. In wikipedia, it says "They used Hans Bethe's crystal field theory and Giulio Racah's linear combinations of Slater integrals, now called Racah parameters..." so I guess I'd better start with Hans Bethe's crystal field...

Hi all, As a beginning theoretical chemist, I'm trying to understand how Tanabe-Sugano diagram was derived. Can someone help me understand the derivation in a nutshell? Thanks!

Thanks for exposing my ignorance on these points and thanks for helping me with a deeper understanding.

Thanks! 1. Doesn't Lz commute with L2 for hydrogen atom? 2. Can I explain the whole situation to a chemist who does not know quantum physics very well in this way: The real orbitals we use for describing bonding are actually linear combinations of solved eigenfunctions. They turned out to be...

Thanks for the answer. Just checking if my understanding is correct or not: 1. These real functions are also eigenfunctions of L2, Lz and H (for hydrogen atom) because of the degeneracy. 2. These real functions are good approximations of eigenfunctions when symmetry is lowered/degeneracy is...

A chemist is becoming suspicious here: So, for visual convenience, the so-called dxy, dxz, dyz, dz2, dx2-y2 orbitals are actually linear combination of eigenfunctions. But chemists have been using the geometric feature of these 'manmade' orbitals to make sense the chemical bonding successfully...

Thanks!

Thanks for the answer! So can we say what is important is what are the term symbols for a given electron configuration, rather than what is the term symbol for a specific microstate?

I'm a chemist trying to understand atomic term symbol. If we list all the micro-states of certain multi-electron configuration, these micro-states can be grouped into several certain terms characterized by L and S. In other words, when we compute the ML and MS for each of the micro-state, they...

Great answer. Thanks! As someone who met group theory just one year ago, I think it would take some time for me to really understand what you said. But anyway, thanks for your answer. I'll keep your answer for later revisit.

Amazed by the closeness of equations for orbital angular momentum L and spin angular momentum S, I can't help asking is associated Legendre differential equation involved in solving spin function? I only heard that spin naturally comes from treatment of quantum mechanics with relativity theory...

Thank you so much for the answer!

Thank you for pointing this one out. I do have a textbook for reference. But I was wondering if I assume the view factor of fireman to wall be 0.5 as if the wall is extending in the opposite direction, this would make it 'infinite' and the factor would be 1, so dividing by two according to...

I'm sorry but I don't know how to determine the configuration factor between the fireman and the ground. I was also wondering how to treat the sky?

my understanding is the wall is extending to infinity both in width and in height. But as the wall is standing on the ground, that's where the 'semi' comes from. By the way, the thickness doesn't make a difference as radiation is mainly concerned about surface.