For those of you who have taken P Chem/Quantum Chem/Quantum Mechanics

[nlsherrill]

How relevant would taking a course(or two) like Physical Chemistry or Quantum Chemistry be to the traditional senior level Quantum Mechanics course for physics majors? The reason I ask is I may end up staying an extra year in undergrad, and my junior year will have some openings. I was looking for other courses that could "assist" me in my senior year, which will include QM, Nuclear Physics, Mathematical physics, etc...

Any thoughts? I stoke to someone with a degree in Chemistry and they said Physical Chem did have a lot of physics in it. Would it be a good prep whatsoever for QM?

 

[Shackleford]

You would almost be taking the course twice.

 

[lisab]

I took a year of p-chem before taking 2 quarters of QM in the physics department. I found the physics course to be far more rigorous.

Keep in mind quantum is just one of many subjects that was covered in p-chem. We also studied spectroscopy, reaction kinetics, and a *lot* of thermo. But in quantum, we just studied...quantum. So it's no surprise the physics course was more demanding.

Yes, p-chem was a good introduction to QM, in my experience. But so was Modern Physics.

 

[czelaya]

It depends on the instructor and department. When I took physical chemistry at the undergraduate level it consisted of learning from Griffith's introduction to quantum mechanics book. Which was the same book and homework problems as the quantum mechanics course taught in the physics department. I remember that almost half of our entire class was physical chemistry students at the graduate level too.

Matter of fact, the statistical mechanics course, half of the students consisted of physical chemistry students also.

When I took summer courses at another local university, p-chem at the undergraduate level, was mainly taught from Atkins' physical chemistry book.

 

[chill_factor]

i took the "applied" Pchem class for biologists and engineers (the other chemistry/physics track has more quantum and less thermo, and no transport processes). there's 1 quarter of quantum. It was mostly about spectroscopy and particle in a box crap. i still have no idea what they were talking about, so i can imagine that physics version would be far harder. The rest of Pchem was about thermo, kinetics, introduction to stat mech and introduction to transport processes.

 

[nlsherrill]

Heres the course website for Physical Chem 1 at my school.

http://courses.ncsu.edu/ch431/lec/401/home1.html

They use the Atkins book. I don't know if it would go more into QM than in a Modern Physics course, but it surely couldn't hurt right? Also, others have said, and the course also indicates, a lot of "thermo". Well by this time I would have already taken Thermal Physics, which is apparently quite a heavy course, so maybe this Chem class wouldn't be that bad?

There doesn't seem to be a course website for Quantum Chemistry.

 

[flemmyd]

at my school, physical chem was roughly on the same level as a sophomore physics modern physics class. although the physical chem class (as others noted) covered way more topics in less depth (spectroscopy, transition states, etc).

the graduate quantum chem is about the same level as the physics undergrad quantum (both use griffiths at my school).

keep in mind that physics students are all kind of the same cloth when they take these classes. in pchem, you have kids who my want to be physical chemists and have taken differ eq, linear algebra, etc. but you also have some kids who are organic/bio chemists who only care enough about physical chem to understand what's going on in the machines they use in lab. pchem tends to be bigger picture.

 

[JasonR]

This is based strictly from talking to a chemistry major friend of mine, but it sounded like they go less in-depth into QM and try to shift it to the bigger-picture chemistry implications. He was also complaining at the start of the semester that most of the people in the class couldn't do basic upper-level math and that they were wasting time by reviewing/crash-coursing it.

Of course, this probably varies from school to school. I'd say, find out what it's like at your school and base it off your interests. If you are trying to be "strictly physics" it might not be for you. If you have a chemistry interest (or maybe something like materials...I'm conjecturing at this point though), it could be useful.

 

[lisab]

This is based strictly from talking to a chemistry major friend of mine, but it sounded like they go less in-depth into QM and try to shift it to the bigger-picture chemistry implications. He was also complaining at the start of the semester that most of the people in the class couldn't do basic upper-level math and that they were wasting time by reviewing/crash-coursing it.

Of course, this probably varies from school to school. I'd say, find out what it's like at your school and base it off your interests. If you are trying to be "strictly physics" it might not be for you. If you have a chemistry interest (or maybe something like materials...I'm conjecturing at this point though), it could be useful.

I, too, was surprised at how many people struggled with the math in p-chem. Out of a class of 25 or so, at least a couple dropped out and switched to biology majors.

 

[johng23]

The p-chem class I took in undergrad was garbage. A bunch of chemistry students who apparently couldn't remember how to do calculus. We would spend class time painstakingly going through the simplest summations and basic probability. The instructor fed us lots of touchy-feely explanations of basic quantum mechanics and assigned trivial mathematic manipulations for homework so it seemed like we were really learning QM or something...

The worst part is, the class gave him an extended applause at the end of the semester. All those fools thought it was great. "Hey, you made quantum easy, you're an amazing prof!" NO.

I'm sure it's not always that bad.

 

[nlsherrill]

The p-chem class I took in undergrad was garbage. A bunch of chemistry students who apparently couldn't remember how to do calculus. We would spend class time painstakingly going through the simplest summations and basic probability. The instructor fed us lots of touchy-feely explanations of basic quantum mechanics and assigned trivial mathematic manipulations for homework so it seemed like we were really learning QM or something...

The worst part is, the class gave him an extended applause at the end of the semester. All those fools thought it was great. "Hey, you made quantum easy, you're an amazing prof!" NO.

I'm sure it's not always that bad.

My physics professor now actually worked in the Chemistry department at some university as a post doc, and said that nobody he worked with really knew QM to any extent, and even the main professors/researchers ended up asking him about a lot of QM stuff and he had just gotten his PhD!

The course prerequisites(for P Chem) seem to be about the same as Modern Physics. I can't take Quantum Chem unless I take P Chem 1, and I can't see any info on Quantum Chem, so I have no clue what that course really goes into. I guess I'll email the instructor or something.

Basically, even if these Chem courses didn't go into QM that much more in depth than Modern Physics, at least I could still be "fresh" with the material, as I won't be taking QM till about 2 years after I take Modern.