In the Winter term of 2010, I will be teaching Chem 567 for the first time. This will not be a course in “rate laws” or other elementary aspects of chemical kinetics since those topics are either covered by undergraduate courses or are so specific to particular situations that general physical principles are not useful or appropriate. Instead, the cheesy subtitle for the course could be “Time for Chemistry”. That is, we will consider time-dependent phenomena in chemistry in many contexts. This approach will allow us to look at kinetics including barrier crossings, transition state theory, Kramers theory, and modern modifications of these. We never want to loose a molecular picture—in fact we want to celebrate and refine our molecular pictures—so we will look at reaction dynamics as well. “Reaction dynamics” is usually a phrase reserved for gas phase reactions, but we will also examine cases in the condensed phase. The course will aim to make extensive connections between theory and experiment.

The text for the course will be Paul Houston’s book: Chemical Kinetics and Reaction Dynamics [link to Dover]. It is inexpensive and covers most of the topics we will discuss. The syllabus will overlap many sections of the book, but I will supplement the text with some more advanced concepts in nonequilibrium statistical mechanics (mostly time correlation functions and relaxation theory) and quantum mechanics (Liouville equation and time-dependent perturbation theory).

Most of the assignments will be computer simulations, and there will be no exams.

Other recommended texts include: McQuarrie’s Stat Mech book, Chandler’s Stat Mech book, Mukamel’s Nonlinear Spectroscopy book and Messiah’s Quantum Mechanics book. All of these can be found in the library.

Computer simulations will play a role in helping students to understand the ideas and get their hands dirty with doing real calculations. We will use Mathematica and Matlab, but students are free to use whatever they prefer, provided the code is well commented.