An Intro to Problem-Solving in Quantum Chemistry
Quantum chemistry, as an application of quantum mechanics, gets a bad rap for being “hard”. There’s a lot of jargon and technical language in the field, which can put up an immediate barrier to entry. On the other hand, it is our belief that anyone can (with a bit of grit) be a quantum chemist. It doesn’t require a steady hand, and you don’t need to be a pro at doing experiments, and once you get past the big words, you’ll find that we don’t really do anything that requires math past what you might have done in eigth grade algebra. All we’re gonna ask of you is that you give it a chance and believe in yourself.
We think there are three main reasons that people think it’s hard
- In a regular Bachelor’s degree, quantum is one of the final courses taken (it it’s taken at all)
- It is (seemingly) one of the most “mathematically involved”
- There’s a boat-load of jargon
Let’s rebut those point-by-point
- Sure, it’s one of the last courses, but that’s just because it’s too fun to teach to everyone :)
- 90% of the time we some French mathematician did the grunt work of figuring out the math for us ~1840 and like why reinvent the wheel?
- Jargon’s annoying for sure, but jargon is just words and we don’t want to let the words have too much power.
Our hope with this resource is to develop strategies to get around having to do integrals–and often derivatives–by breaking our problems down into bits and figuring out the patterns This will of course require time and effort to get good at, after all you’re embarking on a journey in a new sphere of knowledge, but we’re hoping to be a friendly travel guide.
So for a quick roadmap:
- First we’ll make sure everyone has a good basic understanding of the core problems we’re gonna try to solve
- Next we’re going to look at how to take a problem and break it down into a hierarchy of smaller problems and translating these into code
- Third we’ll take a breather to figure out how to figure out how other people solved their problems by learning some tricks for reading code
- Then we’ll take a stab at developing strategies for breaking a chunk of math into its component bits so that we can reuse ideas
- Finally we’ll put this all together to find ways to translate math into code
And for a bonus round, you can head to McCoy Group Code Academy for practical applications of these problems!
Finally, if this isn’t your path that’s cool too. There are tons of great resources out there, track some down that work for you. And if you’re feeling generous, come back and drop some feedback or get involved at contribute!
Got questions? Ask them on the McCoy Group Stack Overflow