Recent content by CrimpJiggler

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    Would there be a market for physics/chemistry web development tools?

    Thanks for all the advice. I'm going to wait until I'm finished college (a few months) before taking on any big projects, since I'm a professional programmer, my scripts get mighty complex and hard to debug, even little plugins are tricky because they have to be perfect.
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    Gaussian - Resuming a calculation

    I heard that if Gaussian crashes, you can just resume the calculation by loading the incomplete log file. How do I do that, I tried opening the incomplete .log file with GaussView and Gaussian and neither work (get error messages). Do I need to create a checkpoint file or something? This time I...
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    Optical Activity: How Do Chiral Molecules Rotate Light?

    I struggle with this concept myself too. In solution, molecules are rotated in every direction so you'd think that the polarisation induced by the electric field of the wave would be isotropic and cancel each other out. But I suppose only some of the orientations (meaning which way they're...
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    What is this functional group, and how do you make it

    On an exam question recently, I had to perform a retrosynthesis on a molecule and it had this functional group on it: it took me by surprise. I decided to cleave the whole thing off, and replace it with a double bond (cuz I know you can make cis diols from double bonds) then things seemed to...
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    Would there be a market for physics/chemistry web development tools?

    I've been making various PHP scripts that make it easier for me to build chemistry tutorials but I spend a lot of time making this software, so it would be cool if I could make some money in the process. Would you say people would pay for something like a chemistry tool wordpress plugin which...
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    What are these pericyclic reactions?

    First one: is this an intramolecular [2+2] photocycloaddition? And this one: I'm fairly confused about this one. Could it be an intramolecular Alder-ene reaction? Whats confusing me most is that cyclopropyl ring up there. I know they're pretty unstable and I read that they open during...
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    Diels-Alder reactions - Does the endo rule always apply

    So when you have a cyclic diene like cyclopentadiene, you can get either the endo or exo isomer. Secondary orbital interactions make the reaction selective towards the endo isomer. This makes sense if your dieneophile is say maleic anhydride: in that case the dienophile has C=O bonds which...
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    NMR: How Does It Work? Confused by 2 Explanations

    I've read two different explanations so I'm confused. The way I thought NMR works is that the protons spins align with the external magnetic field, then the RF radiation applied causes the spins to flip from -1/2 to 1/2, if the frequency of the radio waves are equal to the energy difference...
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    Series of Electronegativity Questions

    Yeah. Electronegativity just means how strongly an atom attracts electrons. Its more obvious with ionic compounds, when you react sodium metal with chlorine gas, you get sodium chloride. In that case that chlorine literally strips away sodiums single valence electron, so when you dissolve NaCl...
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    How would you go about making a sonosensitizer

    How would you go about making a "sonosensitizer" I'm fascinated by this sonoluminescence phenomenon, and how it could apply to photosensitizers, so as a mental exercise (which I may test out in the lab since if I have the opportunity), I'm thinking of how one would come up with a molecule which...
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    Are there any advantanges to VB theory over MO theory?

    Thanks. Yeah, resonance structures explain it pretty simply alright. I didn't know resonance structures applies to coordination complexes like that. That'll help me a lot in understanding the properties of various complexes, thanks a lot.
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    Are there any advantanges to VB theory over MO theory?

    One case that I know of that can be explained only by MO theory, are back bonding in carbonyl metal complexes (the C=O bond gets weakened by electron donation from the metal, AFAIK this can only be explained by considering antibonding orbitals). Another example is cycloadditions, i.e. you can...
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    Are there any advantanges to VB theory over MO theory?

    Are there any things that can be explained by valence bond theory, that cannot be explained by molecular orbital theory? I know of various things that can only be explained by MO theory, and not VB theory, but does it go both ways?
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    Why does slit diffraction occur?

    A side question: When two electromagnetic waves interfere, is the change in amplitude permanent, meaning will they still have altered amplitudes even when they are no longer near each other?
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    Why does slit diffraction occur?

    Ah yeah I was thinking of x-rays which are scattered by electron clouds. Huygens principle, thanks.
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