CHEM 3520 Exam Information

The EXAM DATES are TENTATIVE.  The material coverage is TENTATIVE, and should only serve as a partial preliminary guide.  ADDITIONAL MATERIAL AND CHAPTERS MAY BE INCLUDED ON AN EXAM!  You are responsible for all material within a chapter and all material discussed in class, unless told otherwise. Details provided in the classroom take precendence!

EXAM 1 - Wednesday, February 14, 2007

A previous year's exam can be downloaded:    CHEM 3520 - EXAM 1

Be SURE to know your formulas!!!  (For those of you who have been missing class, we covered what you need to know/what you do not need to know in terms of formulas in a couple of classes last week!)

Tentative material that may be covered includes:

Chapter 11

• What are some of the failures of classical physics?

• wave-particle duality

• de Broglie relation

• wavefunction

• Schrodinger equation

• Born interpretation

• probability density, probability amplitude

• spherical polar coordinates

• operator, eigenvalue, eigenfunction

• linear combination

• commutator

• expectation value

• Heisenberg uncertainty principle

• Can you appropriately identify what is/what is not an eigenfunction or an eigenvalue?

• Can you normalize a wavefunction?

• Did you understand the homework problems?

Chapter 12

• translation, vibrational, and rotational motions

• particle in a box - infinite square well, boundary conditions, quantum numbers, zero-point energy

• Dirac bracket notation

• Kronecker delta

• orthogonality

•  tunnelling

• degeneracy

• harmonic motion, force constant

• energy levels

• wavefunction

• Gaussian function, Hermite polynomial

• associated Legendre function

• Laplacian

• spherical harmonics

• spin

• Do you know your quantum numbers and their meaning?

• Did you understand the homework problems?

EXAM 2 - Wednesday, March 7  
 
 A previous year's exam can be downloaded:    CHEM 3520 - EXAM 2

Tentative material that may be covered includes:

Chapter 13 and 14

• radial wavefunctions and what they lok like

• selection rules

• term symbols and the related quantum numbers

• multiplicity

• quantum numbers

• shells, subshells

• orbital pictures

• most probable radius

• mean radius

• radial distribution function - spherical, general

• reduced mass

• expectation values

• normalization

• orthogonality

• operators - momentum, position, kinetic energy, potential energy

• orbital approximation

• Pauli principle

• Pauli exclusion principle

• shielding

• effective nuclear charge

• Aufbau principle

• Hnd's rules

• Hartree-Fock self-consistent field (SCF) procedure

• singlet and triplet states

• Clebsch-Gordan series

• Bohr radius

• atomic units = Hartree

• alpha and beta - spin up and down (Chap 13)

• Born-Oppenheimer approximation

• valence bond theory 

• molecular orbital theory

• hybridization

• LCAO

• bonding/antibonding orbitals

• bond order

• MO diagrams

• variation principle

• secular determinant

• Huckel approximation

• Coulomb integral (Chap 14 - alpha - different alpha than spin!)

• resonance integral (Chap 14 - beta - different beta than spin!)

• Walsh diagram

• Can you do the assigned homework problems?

• Justification sections that we discussed in class

• Schrodinger equation

• Eq. 13.4, plus relationships between wavefunction and frequency

• Eq. 13.1

• first part of Eq. 13.6

• Eq. 13.9 (be able to extract R and Y from pertinent tables - Table 13.1 and 12.5)

• Eq. 13.21, 13.22

• (NOTE:  Some of the above concepts actually relate to equations - you are responsible for those equations as well)

EXAM 3 - Wednesday, April 11

A previous year's exam can be downloaded :    CHEM 3520 - EXAM

Tentative material that may be covered includes (check back for updates!)

Chapter 15

• symmetry operations

• symmetry elements

• point groups

• character tables (as discussed in class)

Chapter 16 - Sections 16.1-16.8,  Slides -33 of notes

• rotational spectroscopy

• rotational Raman

• moment of inertia

• rotational constant

• selection rules

• linewidths

• Doppler broadening

• lifetime broadening

• populations

• degeneracies

• types of rotors

• wavelength

• frequency

• reduced mass

• Stokes radiation

• anti-Stokes radiation

• Beer-Lambert Law

• molar absorption coefficient

• transmittance

• absorbance

• absorption

• emission

• spectra (e.g., line spacing)

• energetic formula for rotors and in multiple formats (e.g., E, F(J))

• centrifugal distortion

• From Table 16.1 - know formula for diatomics and the second formula for linear rotors (e.g., the ABA molecule case)

• Pertinent exercises and problems:  Exercises 16.5-16.16;  Problem 16.7

EXAM 4 - Wednesday, May 2  

Tentative material that may be covered includes (check back for updates!)

Chapter 16 - Sections 16.9-end of chapter, Slides-34 and beyond of notes*

* NOTE:  Some of the material in this second part of the chapter is dependent on material from the

first part of the chapter - You are responsible for the pertinent material!

• vibrational spectroscopy

• ro-vibrational spectroscopy

• vibrational Raman

• normal modes

• overtones

• Birge-Sponer

• branches of spectra

• Morse potential

• zero-point energy

• dissociation energy

• harmonic versus anharmonic

• be able to compare and contrast vibrational and rotational spectroscopy, vibrational and rotational Raman spectroscopy

• population

• gross and specific selection rules for ALL types of spectroscopy

Chapter 17

• fluorescence

• phosphorescence

• dissociation

• predissocation

• lasers - general principles of laser action

• be aware of a few types of lasers and their applications

• vertical transition

• Franck-Condon principle

Chapter 19

• What is statistical thermodynamics?

• molecular partition function

• canonical partition function

FINAL EXAM - Friday, May 11 - 8:00  - 10:00 a.m.