Chem 125 Lecture 1 9/5/00 Projected material This material is for the exclusive use of Chem 125 students at Yale and may not be copied or distributed further. It is not readily understood without reference to notes from the lecture.

Enter on the white card in this order (no need to write categories) Name (pronunciation hints if necessary) Prefer to be Called (e.g. Jay, not Jethro) Hometown with zip code Name of your best science teacher (with subject) Prospective major(s) Put comments or questions on back.

Exam Dates 9 lectures Sept 26 9 lect Oct 19 9 lect Nov lect Dec pts 300 pts Semester grade biased by faithfulness in timely problem set submission

HELP ! Other Chem 125 students! Alumni Text: Introduction to Organic Chemistry (4th ed ) Streitwieser, Heathcock, and Kosower Lecture Notes (in class questions) Course web site: Assigned problems or questions Instructor : Prof. J. M. McBride TAs : Ivar McDonald & ? (Mon/Thurs evenings ? ) Teaching Interns: Kathie Huang & Collin May

Problems For Friday: 1) Which two class members live nearest you? 2) What are the three most common items of advice from course veterans? 3) Send to For Monday: (Problems from Text - Ch 2: 1,2, 4a-e, 5a-e ) 1) Are Lewis Structures correct? 2) What do they show?

How do you know? John McBride (age 3)

How do you know? John McBride (age 29)

Finger Writes

Shows Joshua

Asks question of Class

Class

Do not suppose that I was a very deep thinker, or was marked as a precocious person. I was a very lively imaginative person, and could believe in the "Arabian Nights" as easily as in the "Encyclopaedia." But facts were important to me, and saved me. I could trust a fact, and always cross-examined an assertion. So when I questioned Mrs. Marcet's book by such little experiments as I could find means to perform, and found it true to the facts as I could understand them, I felt that I had got hold of an anchor in chemical knowledge, and clung fast to it. Michael Faraday, 1858

If they say to you science has shown such and such, you might ask, "How does science show it - how did the scientists find out - how, what, where?" Not science has shown, but this experiment, this effect has shown. When someone says science teaches such and such, he is using the word incorrectly. Science doesn't teach it; experience teaches it. Learn from science that you must doubt the experts…Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts. Richard Feynman (to National Science Teachers Assn 1966) Why cite Feynman? No. Because he deserves credit for saying something that is true and saying it very well. Because he is an expert?

Munowitz (fall 73)

Munowitz review facts

Budiansky Cover

How do we know?

What are the most important TOOLS?

G.N. Lewis ( ) & his Cubic Octet

Lewis on running board G. N. Lewis

Octet "Explains" Periodicity, Electron Transfer (1902)

Octet Predicts Shared Pair Bonding ? shared edge shared face

G.W. and Robert Robinson (1917) Partial Valences to “explain” trivalent and pentavalent N???

Levitator by Martin Simon (UCLA) Eppur sta fermo

Thanks to Prof. André Geim Frog

In systems governed by inverse-square force laws there can be no local minimum (or maximum) of potential energy. Earnshaw's Theorem (1839)

Visualizing Earnshaw - Coulomb's Electrostatics

A positive particle has a local maximum or minimum of energy only at the location of another charged particle, never in free space.

In systems governed by inverse-square force laws there can be no local minimum (or maximum) of potential energy. Earnshaw's Theorem The only stationary points are saddle points.

"I have ever since regarded [the cubic octet] as representing essentially the arrangement of electrons in the atom" G. N. Lewis (1923) Was Lewis ignorant of Earnshaw's Theorem?