Condensed concepts

Last friday we were fortunate to have David Sholl give a physics colloquium at UQ, ``What Does Quantum Mechanics Have To Do With The Chemi...

This post concerns a basic but bold claim about the effects of a protein or solvent environment on chemical structure and reactivity. I am n...

Previously I posted about the role of short strong H-bonds [sometimes called low-barrier H-bonds] in the enzyme KSI. There is a very inte...

For my latest celebrity scientist speaking gig [at a small church youth group] my glamorous assistant [my wife] found a new demonstration to...

Enzymes are amazing molecules. They increase rates of specific chemical reactions by factors as large as a trillion. Without them there woul...

Before I gave my talk in Bangalore about proton transfer in enzymes I reviewed some of the recent literature since I have not worked on the...

Demonstrations to school students can easily degenerate into the following format. First, one does something spectacular such as the Coke-Me...

How do enzymes work? Are they any different from other catalysts? The traditional view is no. They simply lower the energy barrier of the t...

Enzymes are amazing. Today I went to an interesting chemistry seminar today by Ian Dance , Nitrogenase reduces N2 to NH3 and CO to hydroca...

Yesterday I had a really helpful discussion with Judith Klinman about the question of quantum tunneling of hydrogen in enzymes. [An accessib...

Research in chemistry is all about making new molecules. I have written a few previous posts about organometallic compounds and transition m...

Why and how do atoms chemically bond to surfaces? This can be described by the Newns-Anderson model Hamiltonian. A nice brief overview is...

This week Elvis Shoko, Seth Olsen, and I read more of the beautiful review article, by Roald Hoffmann,  A chemical and theoretical way to lo...

I have started reading (with Seth Olsen and Elvis Shoko) a beautiful Reviews of Modern Physics article by Roald Hoffmann, A chemical and the...

In Seattle, I had a really interesting and helpful discussion with Charlie Campbell about doped rare earth oxides. Cerium oxides have attra...

When is it time to mothball Density functional theory? [sorry for the second pun..] Yesterday I had a nice meeting with Charlie Campbell and...

Here is the current version of the slides for a talk, "Charge redistribution near oxygen vacancies in cerium oxides", that I am gi...

Next tuesday I am visiting the Chemistry Department at University of Washington. I am giving a seminar on "Charge distribution near oxy...

G.U. Kulkarni gave a really nice talk at the conference from which I learnt a few fascinating things about gold nanoparticles. He is co-auth...

A fundamental scientific question of technological importance concerning oxides of transition metals and rare earths is: When an oxygen atom...