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Movies of Molecular Model Vibrations
Author

William Martin McClain
Organization: Wayne State University
Department: Department of Chemistry
Description

Normal modes of molecular vibration lie at the heart of understanding the absorption of infrared light by molecules. These notebooks were developed to accompany an undergraduate laboratory experiment. Students spend one week using the infrared spectrometer, and two weeks understanding the theory, as presented in the notebooks. The molecular model is a spring-and-ball model, and it uses only Hooke's Law for the springs and Newton's Third Law for the balls. The problem is transformed to an eigenproblem, solved, and the solution is transformed back to the spring-and-ball space. It is then easy to produce a movie of the molecular motion, starting from any desired initial conditions. We show pseudorotation of a ring molecule, a motion that cannot be foreseen intuitively. 1994 Mathematica Developer Conference, Champaign, Illinois.
Subjects

*Science > Chemistry
*Science > Physics > Nuclear and Particle Physics
Keywords

Physics, chemistry, molecular vibration, molecular models, courseware, 1994 Mathematica Developer Conference 1994
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1-TriangleNormalModes.nb (377.9 KB) - Mathematica Notebook
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2-TriangleMovies.nb (564.6 KB) - Mathematica Notebook

Files specific to Mathematica 2.2 version:
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1-TriangleNormalModes.ma (219.2 KB) - Mathematica Notebook 2.2 or older
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2-TriangleMovies.ma (59.3 KB) - Mathematica Notebook 2.2 or older