Chemistry for Physicists

Aim

This course will cover general undergraduate level chemistry for students lacking this knowledge in their bachelor’s degree. It will prepare students for advanced courses in materials chemistry, polymer science and electrochemistry. It will cover basics of bonding, structure and reactivity in detail alongside common analytical methods and practical techniques in chemistry.

After finishing the course, the student should be able to:

• Describe the primary and secondary structures of covalent, ionic and metallic solids and explain their properties using concepts such as orbital energy match, charge density, Van der Waals interactions and delocalization.
• Predict entropy changes in a reaction, use Hess cycles to calculate various enthalpies, calculate Gibbs free energies and describe chemical equilibria using qualitative and quantitative methods.
• Explain the concept of aromaticity and predict how various functional groups would contribute to a conjugated system.
• Describe basic organic transformations, draw an organic reaction mechanism, explain reactivity or predict products for simple reactions.
• Conduct molarity, molecular weight, pH and pKa calculations and use chemical knowledge to determine reaction stoichiometry.
• Use experimental analysis to help in molecular structure determination
• Perform basic separation and purification organic synthesis techniques

Content

The lectures will follow the content below – questions sheets and tutorials will consolidate and apply content from 1 or 2 lectures.

General concepts of covalent, ionic and metallic bonding will be recapped. The structure and properties of molecules, ions and non-molecular materials will be discussed in the context of non-covalent interactions, trends across the periodic table and solution/interfacial chemistry.

Core quantitative skills including, molarity, stoichiometry, pH and ideal gas laws calculations will be recapped before students are introduced to 1st and 2nd laws of thermodynamics from a chemistry perspective. This will include the concepts of energy, enthalpy, entropy, and Gibbs free energy, and their relevance to chemical equilibrium.

Orbital and bonding concepts from the Physical Chemistry for Materials Science course will be expanded into an organic chemistry context to explain conjugation, aromaticity and electron withdrawing and donating groups. Students will be introduced to organic reaction mechanisms using basic examples of substitution, addition and elimination, and learn to explain and predict reactivity using concepts such as nucleophile strength or leaving group ability. More specific areas such as radical chemistry and redox reactions will also be introduced to prepare students for later courses.

Laboratory Sessions may include:

• titration to calculate empirical formulae
• molarity or pH of unknown substances or solutions
• organic transformations to develop experimental skills such as thin-layer chromatography, aqueous work ups or recrystallization
• characterization techniques such as IR, UV-Vis or NMR.