Physical Chemistry Problems and Readings

Review of Elementary Mathematics/Chemistry/Physics

The following materials are available:

• Beginning Discussion of Mathematics Prerequisites for Physical Chemistry (a work in progress, comments cheerfully accepted)
• Elementary Review Problems
• Here is ch1q23 worked out in Maple V to show a method of working which students may find beneficial. Maple ch1q23.

Practice Exam Questions, First Semester (Chemistry 263)

• Gases and Kinetic Theory
  Some additional pertinant readings are listed here:
  1. The DeMoivre (Euler) Theorem, a Route to Easier Trigonometric Identities.
  2. The Stirling Approximation, a derivation using the area to integral formulation
  3. The Gauss Integral
  4. The van der Waals Fluid's liquid vapor coexistence locus" which is a discission of the "exact" solution to the vapor pressure equations derived from the Maxwell construction. Please note that there are several other papers concerning the van der Waals equation, including its direct solution as a cubic equation (manuscript 88 in the series).
• Solids
• Energy, Work and Heat
• Thermochemistry
• Second Law, Carnot Cycles, Entropy, Third Law
  Some additional pertinant readings are listed here:
  1. The Legendre Transformation
  2. An Example of the Legendre Transformation
  3. The Legendre Transformation and the Sackur-Tetrode Equation
  4. A Non-Traditional View of Spontaneity which has been rewritten (and hopefully improved) can be found at Spontaneity
  5. The above items have been rewritten (with hoped for improvements) and can be found at The Legendre Transformation for beginning Thermodynamics students
• Stability, Free Energy (Thermodynamic Potentials)
• Phase Equilibria
• Chemical Equilibrium
• Chemical Kinetics
• Elementary Quantum (0)

M. Articolo

J. Cavallari

A. Evenski

S. Golden

C. Hu

B. Litke

J. Morin

T. Neyarapally

B. Rivers

C. Sharma

J. Zgorski
worked very hard checking these questions. Since they have been edited since being checked, the responsibilty for subsequent induced errors surely remains with me.
cwd, May 2,1996

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Practice Exam Questions, Second Semester (Chemistry 264)

• Elementary Quantum (I) Particle In a Box
• Elementary Quantum (II) Harmonic Oscillator
• Elementary Quantum (III) Angular Momentum
• Elementary Quantum (IV) Rigid Rotor
• Elementary Quantum (V) H Atom (and beyond)
• Elementary Quantum (VI) H₂⁺ Cation Radical (and beyond)
• Spectroscopy (I)
• Statistical Thermodynamics
  For a disscussion of the Maxwell Boltzmann Distribution and the
  1. First Law of Thermodynamics you can look here.
  2. The Maxwell Boltzmann Distribution Without Lagrange Multipliers.
  3. The Stirling Approximation, a derivation using the area to integral formulation
  4. The Harmonic Oscillator Ladder Operator Solution

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If you are interested in how these questions were created, i.e., Perl, CGI, HTML, Latex2HTML, Java, etc., etc., etc., then you may wish to look at a a manuscript which explains at various levels how these questions can be implemented. Since this book is constantly changing, please forgive its rather informal style.

To read a manuscript concerning molecular vibrations in water using Maple as the language of choice to better understand normal modes, IR absorption, etc., please check out: this manuscript.

Ein kluger Mensch lernt von seinen Fehlern, ein klügerer Mensch von den Fehlern von Anderen!

Frank W. David, b:June 4, 1904 d:June 10, 1960

h = 6.62606891x10^-34 Joule-sec E. R. Williams, R. L Steiner, D. B. Newell and P. T. Olsen, Phys. Rev. Lett. 81, 2404 (1998)
This material was created by Carl W. David when he was an active faculty member at the University of Connecticut.
index.html, July 1, 2010
edited slightly June 2018
edited slightly March 2024