I delighted to find yesterday that the 91st edition of the Handbook of Chemistry and Physics is online (to subscribers). I think looking at the data is great anti-dote to the hubris of theorists, particularly reductionists. For example, how many of the listed properties (or even trends therein) can we accurately calculate, whether it is melting temperatures of simple solids or electron affinities of organic molecules?
The fact that spectroscopic properties of diatomic molecules are parametrised in terms of the Morse potential shows how good that empirical potential is!
Now the meaning of "handbook" becomes even stranger. Many editions ago the book ceased to be something you could hold in your hand! Now, in some sense it isn't even a book!
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
What does this movie tell us about the modern university?
Last night, my wife and I watched the movie, Wit. You can watch the full movie here (free with ads). I should warn that some of the conten...
-
This week Nobel Prizes will be announced. I have not done predictions since 2020 . This is a fun exercise. It is also good to reflect on w... -
The Ising model is a paradigm in both statistical mechanics and condensed matter physics. Today for most theorists it is so familiar that so... -
Nitrogen fluoride (NF) seems like a very simple molecule and you would think it would very well understood, particularly as it is small enou...
No comments:
Post a Comment