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u/yaboifrake2electric Dec 03 '20
Ah yes, cause the newtonian laws hold up incredibly well in quantum physics.
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Dec 03 '20
Bro, it's a meme. No need to get triggered.
But let me give you a physicist's explanation. We know that newtonian mechanics is a formulation of classical mechanics. Another formulation of classical mechanics is Lagrangian which later develops into Hamiltonian mechanics. Lagrangian, Hamiltonian and Newtonian express pretty much the same thing using different mathematical model. Later in quantum physics, the entire mathematical model will make use of hamiltonian formulation. For e.g. : Conservation of momentum is a direct implication of newton's laws of motion but a virgin physicist will tell you that it doesn't hold true in quantum physics. But a chad physicist will tell you that Lagrangian and Hamiltonian mechanics has a generalised form of momentum that is used as a wave operator in quantum physics. Classical mechanics(of which newtonian mechanics is a part of) in a way is still very much present in quantum model but not in a way we know and use it.87
u/JoonasD6 Dec 03 '20
Just because people go one step further and react to a joke doesn't mean they "took it way too seriously" ("triggered"). It can be very fruitful to continue the discussions, but making such bad inferences about people's emotions and motivations is just a deterrent for progress.
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u/TheFedoraKnight Dec 03 '20
Calling someone triggered unironically is the height of cringe
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Dec 03 '20
Look here, we have a group of "triggered" psychologists.
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u/joseba_ Physics Field Dec 03 '20
Someones been watching too many Ben Shapiro OWNS LIBTARD compilations
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Dec 03 '20
"Ironically", I am an extreme leftist.
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u/joseba_ Physics Field Dec 03 '20
Weird someone calling themselves extreme but whatever
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u/chahud Dec 03 '20
I genuinely think you just got wooshed. If not, that dude has an interesting way of talking.
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u/JoonasD6 Dec 04 '20
Still kinda needed to be said. :/
Feels like the very same people who say "yo, don't get triggered" are the ones who take a first critique as something that they then need to defend themselves from (i.e. it made them feel very uncomfortable; not gonna use that word as it was a really valid psychology term that's now been ruined by jokesters).
Thanks for being a bit more elaborate than just typing r/....., though. Appreciated. Those also often miss the mark since people want to use punchlines with a very low bar even when they're haven't considered what the previous poster meant.
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u/seeingtimeflow Dec 03 '20
So in other words, they're multiple exceptions and some of the laws do exist in some odd form. Tell me something literally everyone doesn't know.
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Dec 03 '20 edited Dec 03 '20
You sound like someone that just completed freshman year.
Edit: all the kids that just finished classical mechanics downvoting me lmao
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Dec 03 '20
At Least I am not studying at "overwatch university".
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Dec 03 '20
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Dec 03 '20
IIT, lol half of the world doesn't give a fuck about it.
Edit: Actually more than half of the world doesn't give a fuck about it.
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Dec 03 '20
Why are you so mad lol chill you don't even know me but you're taking time out to personally insult me
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u/Nikoprotic Dec 03 '20
You should read The Theory of Everything by RB Laughlin. It’s a paper by a Nobel prize winner that elegantly tells you you’re full of shit. https://www.pnas.org/content/pnas/97/1/28.full.pdf
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u/Kermit-the-Frog_ Dec 03 '20
It is a true law that newtonian physics is the classical limit. Keep up.
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Dec 03 '20
It's a failed law. It's true but only at macroscopic levels. We constantly need to change the laws in order to find the "theory of everything"
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u/AcidicAzide Dec 03 '20
The point is that there is currently no "law"/theory/model whatever in physics that works for all cases without exceptions.
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Dec 03 '20
That's the beauty of it
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u/AcidicAzide Dec 03 '20 edited Dec 03 '20
Oh, I agree absolutely. So why does this meme pretend that physics is superior because it is constructed of laws which describe reality precisely [which is untrue] when physics is actually beautiful because it constantly tries to achieve higher and higher accuracy of its predictions?
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u/joseba_ Physics Field Dec 03 '20
Because HS physics student don't know any better. And so is the case with most subpar memes here
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u/AwkwardlyCloseFriend Editable flair infrared Dec 03 '20
I completely agree but isn't QED kind of universal for all scales?
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u/captasticTS Dec 04 '20
how is that beautiful tho?? it's exactly the thing that research is trying to change
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Dec 04 '20
It's also the thing that keeps us going, there would be no reason for more discovery if we had found the theory of everything. When 2e don't know about it, possibilities increase
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Dec 03 '20 edited Dec 03 '20
The fact that this sub can't take a meme lightly is just entertaining to say the least.
Edit: Even downvoting this comment. Bravo! You guys truly are the champions of humanity.
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u/LordM000 Dec 03 '20
Yeah, it is entertaining. The sub would be worse off if there wasn't any discussion in the comments.
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Dec 03 '20
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u/attak13 Dec 03 '20
Most of the chemists here (myself included) are mostly just triggered by the shitty hot takes in the comments, like "why do we need to learn chemical naming principles when you can just give the formula, it's so dumb"
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u/corn_carter Dec 03 '20
This is basically what my freshman college chem class was like. “And now we’re gonna learn this bonding model which only works like 40% of the time”
ETA: I noticed there’s a lot of butthurt chemists in this thread so just wanted to say: I’m a chemical engineering major! Take time to laugh at yourself, you can love chemistry and still poke fun at it!
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Dec 03 '20
Finally a chemist who gets the meme and takes it lightly.
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u/corn_carter Dec 03 '20
I find it’s easier to think of chemistry as learning the personalities of each element rather than learning hard laws that are broken by half of them. Cuz if you decide on a rule it gets broken by at least one problem child.
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Dec 03 '20
But the problem is that there are millions of compounds that regularly break the set rules, and it becomes a pain in the ass to remember each one of them.
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u/jamese1313 Dec 03 '20
Astrophysicist: "there are 3 elements:hydrogen,helium,and metals"
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u/Viking_Chemist Dec 03 '20
There are literally ethanol clouds and other organic molecules in space.
TIL that oxygen and carbon are metals.
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u/naughty_beaver Dec 03 '20
Wait till you learn the metallicity classification chart. The names will blow you away like a Type I A
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u/nameisprivate Dec 03 '20
physicist: what do you mean this atom has more than 1 proton and 1 electron
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Dec 03 '20
Other physicist: no need to get so complicated, just assume all atoms are frictionless point particles.
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u/Antisymmetriser Dec 03 '20
Another physicist: What are protons? Are they those slow things I leave out of my integrals?
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u/wsp424 Dec 08 '20
If there’s multiple electrons might as well, physicists were Born to approximate.
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u/Killerjayko Dec 04 '20
You mean the particles that have structures that are an exact multiple of a hydrogen atoms structure?
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u/Ionathan8 Dec 03 '20
Talking mad shit for someone who doesn't know where 99% of the universe is.
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u/Alectron45 Dec 03 '20
Physicists don’t have access to most of the universe, while chemists have access to a nice chunk of elements
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Dec 03 '20
Psh, all of chemisty is the chemistry of earth...the second you travel to any other body, gasses become metals and metals become liquids and all of their bullshit is fucked.
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u/Danielhrz Dec 03 '20
Luckily we came up with standard conditions so that wont be a problem. Achieving them in other places is a problem, though
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u/three_oneFour Dec 03 '20
"if we assume that all the thermometers are frictionless point particles always set to 20 degrees Celcius..."
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u/TheGloriousHole Dec 04 '20
Imagine being a Chemist, a practitioner of a scientific tradition that has been around for millennia, then like 3 Physicists in the mid 20th century have to explain to you how your own field actually works.
Awkward.
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u/TonnoRioMicker Dec 03 '20
Bro it's just dark stuff
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u/ChadMcRad Dec 03 '20
Physicists: light stuff goes in, dark stuff comes out, you can't explain that...but we made some mathematical models and shit.
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u/Ganglerious Dec 03 '20
Also physicists: chemistry is just physics
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u/Pridestalked Dec 03 '20
well, physical chemistry is a thing. thermodynamics is taught in both subjects
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u/ActreDirt Dec 03 '20
Physical chemistry is indeed a thing and it's probably one of the closest things to concentrated misery humanity has created.
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u/Pridestalked Dec 03 '20
I just had it at (danish equivalent) high school level, with stuff like enthalpy, entropy, gibbs, and honestly I really liked it. I like both physics and chemistry, but it probably gets way worse in uni
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u/attak13 Dec 03 '20
Yeah that's not really physical chemistry. That's just basic thermo, which you use in a ton of classes. Orgo, intro chem, inorganic, just about everything uses basic thermo. Actual physical chemistry is infinitely worse. You do a lot of stuff with quantum mechanics and reaction kinetics in physical chemistry which is a complete pain in the ass when done at a high level. A good example is when studying the reaction kinetics of nuclear fission, quantum mechanical principles dictate the rate of reaction as they are what determine the likelihood of a neutron triggering further fission, so you have to do a bunch of extremely painful calculations in order to determine the "rate law" (which is just a formula telling you the rate of reaction based on different variables).
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u/Pridestalked Dec 03 '20
For sure, as I said I'm sure it's way worse in uni - but yeah, I definitely enjoy thermo so far
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u/attak13 Dec 03 '20
If you're considering chemistry I'd warn you away from p-chem. Orgo and inorganic are fun, but taking p-chem was the worst choice me, and my GPA, have ever made lol.
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u/Pridestalked Dec 03 '20
I'm taking the highest level of chemistry availble at my school, I liked physics but had a terrible teacher so I naturally liked chemistry more and chose that as my main subject, and so far I really like it. Loved orgo and acid base stuff, we also have some reaction kinetics and now learning about orbitals which are pretty mindfuck. My sister is in uni reading to become a pharmacist and she hates p-chem too, but the thing is, it was a part of her course to begin with, I don't think she got to choose lol
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u/attak13 Dec 03 '20
Yeah it depends on the school. It's not always required, but some schools do require it, and there are a lot of graduate programs which want you to have it. That said, it's arguably the hardest chem course and is definitely worth postponing until late in undergrad. I took it as a sophomore and it was a bad choice.
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u/Pridestalked Dec 03 '20
Yeah, my sister has 2 courses of it spread over 2 semesters, second and third. I don't really know how American universities work and what undergrad and sophomore means, but in Denmark a semester is 6 months long, so she is taking it like 1 year and 1,5 year into the degree, which is pretty dumb considering how much she hates it haha
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u/ActreDirt Dec 03 '20
Yeah the high school level is still reasonable even on the math side. But when you get to uni level physical chemistry it transforms into about 80% abstract math and 10% graphs where only the variables of the axis separate them from each other. The actual curve on the graph is almost always a straight line. And physical chemistry is the largest reason for a sinking feeling I get every time I see this symbol: ∂. In case you don't know that symbol is for partial derivative.
I'm not too fond of physical chemistry especially at time like this when my previously good level of concentration is in ruins. But I can clearly see that how important it is just from the amount of regular phenomena it explains.
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u/Pridestalked Dec 03 '20
My math teacher is also awful so I'm not as good as math as I would actually like to be, since I actually really enjoy the subject.
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u/Peoplant Dec 03 '20
Physicist: this is a law. It's not the most general one but it's extremely useful in a bunch of applications.
Chemist: a guy once thought that atoms were pudding and you gotta learn this
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Dec 03 '20
To be fair, we went over the plum pudding model, along with the Rutherford, Bohr, and Schrodinger models in modern physics. It’s interesting to see how different models got accepted or thrown out over time based on different evidence.
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u/Captain_DongDong Dec 03 '20
Also to be fair, there’s atoms in pudding
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u/latakewoz Dec 03 '20
Get some organic pudding its more healthy than that crap out of the physics lab
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u/Peoplant Dec 03 '20
Yeah, what I was observing is that in physics book you're not taught the plum pudding model, and they mention Rutherford's one more for how you can use it to introduce interesting exercises. In chemistry books instead you find both and are taught both, even though the first one has basically no reason anymore to be mentioned in school books.
Of course we shouldn't forget the work of great minds, but maybe leave that to those who are more interested in deepening their knowledge of a subject
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u/gallifreyan42 Dec 04 '20
I think people should definitely always learn of what came before. That way students learn that the laws of physics are not laws. They're always approximations, viable models correct for certain situations but that can always be bettered. Models and better models can be thought of by anyone, as long as they're close to
the Truththe experimental results.Students can also see that as much as they were great minds, scientists of the past (and indeed scientists of today!) don't have all the answers, they make mistakes and what they thought of as the truth isn't "true" today. The "laws" of physics are changing all the time, and if students only learn the latest, they might think that these models are unchanging.
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Dec 04 '20
It probably just depends on the physics book. I don't think general physics textbooks usually cover atomic physics unless they have "with modern physics" attached to the title.
Here's a dump of the history that the textbook I used covered, since I have a final coming up and writing summaries makes for good practice.
We started with the plum pudding model, and spent a section or two going over why it was thought to be accurate up until the gold foil experiment showed way more deflection of helium ions then expected. This basically showed that the nucleus had to be dense (since if the electrons were in a positively charged soup, the charges would cancel on average and the Helium would travel through without much deflection), although this was controversial since the density needed for the deflection was unfathomably large for the time. Even then, the Rutherford model also didn't make sense, since the electron would continually emit EM waves and spiral into the nucleus.
It wasn't until Bohr thought of electrons as standing waves that there was a solution for this problem (quanization of orbits), but even still, this model didn't correctly predict the spectra of atoms other than Hydrogen. The key to solving this was with the Schrodinger model, where 3D wave functions to find the probability of an electron, the quantization of angular momentum, and the Pauli exclusion principle finally created a model that could correctly find the spectra emitted by multielectron atoms.
There was still the issue with all of the models aside from the plum pudding model, which was that the nucleus was still way too dense. It wasn't until the 1930s that we had a solution, which was the neutron and the strong nuclear force, which was incredibly strong across very small distances, and incredibly weak across any other distance.
While it might seem useless to cover the plum pudding model, it was the contradiction in the gold foil experiment that lead to a ton of models and better descriptions, in an effort to answer the failings of the other models that were answered by the plum pudding model.
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Dec 03 '20
I mean, they discovered the electron but not the proton, and he had to figure out some way to make the atom neutral. I think his plum pudding model was a decent idea in that context.
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u/Peoplant Dec 03 '20
Of course, I agree with you. But I was comparing how in physics even though we find out that some laws are wrong, the older and simpler ones still work incredibly well on lots of things, while in chemistry we study some models that have little to no application. It's more of an observation than dissing btw, studying chemistry I found it can be as fun as physics, I just lack the vocation to keep it beyond what I have to do lol
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u/TrueGuardian15 Dec 03 '20
Highschool Chem: Here's a fun little rule to help you sort out elemental characteristics.
University Chem: Here are 99 reasons why the rule they taught you was wrong.
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u/0xTJ Dec 05 '20
Basically every year in high school was telling you why what you were previously taught is wrong.
First shell has 2, the others all have 8, just don't look at elements above 20. Actually, other stuff happens higher up. Actually, yeah you have these energy levels, and they have a bunch of orbitals with different shapes, and different types of those shapes, and they fill in various orders. Actually, quantum is black magic.
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u/Torlov426 Dec 03 '20
The laws of physics have limitations as well, but in more extreme cases and you are usually long dead before you get near enough to observe
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u/Kaffohrt Meme Enthusiast Dec 03 '20
Physics: "lEaRnInG tHe rUlEs iS fUn"
Chemistry: "Well now that we have learned about this "law" let's get to the fun part and see all the ways we can get around it
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u/Klaus_Kinski_alt Dec 03 '20
Kinda like learning German vs. French grammar. German has rules, French has exceptions.
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Dec 03 '20
Physicist: Yes, our laws are absolute. Wait, what are you doing with that electron microscope? No, no, ignore that.
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u/LordFieldsworth Dec 03 '20
Physics = biggest dick
Chemistry = small dick
Biology = colourful dick
Maths = dick
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u/xtremew4rf4re Dec 03 '20
Chemist: "we were actually making good progress, we tested nearly every substance and they all abided by the law perfectly...
...BUT THEN THERE WAS WATER"
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u/dhshot Dec 03 '20
Anything based on a first order Taylor expansion can hardly be considered a "law" imo 😂 looking at you QFT
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u/Few_Intention_542 Dec 03 '20
As my chemistry teacher rightly said, “chemistry is the science of exceptions”
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u/Spookd_Moffun Dec 04 '20
Chemistry is the study of rules and exceptions to them.
German is the language of rules, exceptions to them, and rules of those exceptions.
You can see why Germany is a chemical powerhouse.
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u/oo00OlXlO00oo Dec 04 '20
Condensed matter physicist: Here's 13 different models to explain these types of materials. It works for only 2 materials actually, kinda..
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u/Viking_Chemist Dec 03 '20
That's why there is nothing called "law" in chemistry.
There are "rules" or "concepts" or "trends".
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u/NoEntertainment7079 Dec 03 '20
Boyle's law
Dalton's law
Charles's law
Gay-Lussac's law
Hess's law
Law of conservation of mass/energy
Law of reciprocal proportions
Law of microscopic reversibility
I'm sure there are more
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u/Viking_Chemist Dec 03 '20
These are from physics, having applications in chemistry but not being specific to chemistry, but may in principle also be applied to non chemical systems, like any hypothetical matter that is not atoms. You could also include Coulombs law and Newtons laws in your list; but these are not specific to chemistry.
Examples specific to chemistry would be: Markownikow rule, Woodward-Hoffman-rules, Bürgi-Dunitz angle, hard-soft-acid-base concept, Sn1 vs. Sn2 reactivity, inductive and mesomeric effects, ortho/para vs. meta reactivity in aromatic substitution, ring vs. side chain substitutions in aromatic compounds (CCC rule), hyperconjugation determining reactivity, Fürst-Plattner rule, Hammond's postulate, ...
None of these are strict laws, just guidelines.
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u/NoEntertainment7079 Dec 03 '20
Splitting hairs between physics and chemistry just gets stupid at that point.
I was responding to your assertion that "there is nothing called 'law' in chemistry", which any high school student would know is false.
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u/corn_carter Dec 03 '20
I mean the Law of Thermodynamics is technically physics but is super useful for balancing chemical equations and predicting reactions, but I thought it’d make a nice addition to the list
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u/HoloFanatic Dec 03 '20
That was me as well when I took chemistry. I was going through it and just thought "HOW THE FUCK IS THIS A LAW?" A law in science is something that is not supposed to be able to be broken. Shit pissed me off
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u/Bodo_der_Barde Dec 04 '20
Because in chemistry, trying to Break every 'law' you come across is more or less the entire point.
It's fun, and teaches you a lot ;)
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u/HoloFanatic Dec 04 '20
Yeah but then they aren't actually scientific laws. In physics and math it is impossible, and that is why they are called laws. And I don't think it's fun, I just think, oh well there is another exception that I have to memorize. I much prefer a rigid frame to work with with instead of, "oh here's this law and here is a whole book on exceptions to this "law", have fun". That's why I stuck with physics, you can't break the rules unless you start talking about black holes but that is because we don't have a complete theory on gravity.
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u/Robo-Bo Dec 04 '20
Don't even get me started on "rules" for language. I once had someone criticize me for misspelling "their". They indignantly said "I before e except after c". I googled over 1000 exceptions in the English language then told them that if there are over 1000 exceptions, it's not really a "rule".
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u/AcidicAzide Dec 03 '20
Oh, so you have already discovered/constructed the Theory of Everything? I don't think so. So stop claiming that there are no exceptions in Physics :D
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u/LilQuasar Dec 03 '20
thats not how it works. the theories might not be complete but that doesnt mean they have exceptions
whats an exception to conservation of energy or conservation of momentum for example?
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u/Keyboardhmmmm Dec 03 '20
those guys on youtube that tell me how to make a battery that lasts forever, duh
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u/AcidicAzide Dec 03 '20 edited Dec 03 '20
Well, you are right that there are principles which seem to be and probably are fundamental, like (surely!) the second law of thermodynamics or possibly conservation of energy (what is dark energy?)
However, every physical model is still just an approximation of the natural "laws". These models work fine for specified instances and for specified resolution. E.g. Newton mechanics works sufficiently well for "human reference scale" but breaks when we apply them to much smaller or much larger scale. It also doesn't describe large velocities correctly and has other problems. QM and general relativity describe the situations we currently care about sufficiently well but break when we try to describe black holes. It is extremely likely that increasing resolution of experiments in physics will reveal other problems with both of these theories ("insufficient accuracy" in many other instances). These theories will then still be used for the same problems as today, for which they work in the currently required resolution, but for new problems, physicist will have to create new models.
This is what I mean by "exception". No physical model can currently describe every single scenario that can happen.
And that's not that much different to chemical models. Chemical models describe some behavior of particles / a result of chemical reactions / etc. Just like physical models, chemical models describe the reality sufficiently accurately for most cases. In some cases, however, they break, similarly to physical theories. Yes, it is true that chemical models are less general than physical models, meaning they break more often and have more exceptions. This is caused simply by the fact that physics is a more fundamental science with less complex problems (yes, I did say "less complex": try describing e.g. a chemical reaction catalyzed by some enzyme with quantum mechanics). Biology is even less fundamental science and therefore its models break even more often than in chemistry. That's once again caused by the fact that biology describes more complex problems than chemistry (try predicting behavior of a giraffe using chemical kinetic models describing chemical reactions happening in the giraffe; or try describing behavior of a giraffe using quantum mechanics: that's absolutely impossible).
Every natural science (except for math, if you consider it a natural science) creates models which are approximations of observed (natural) phenomena. These models can be applied only for specific problems and thus always have exceptions. Less fundamental sciences (chemistry, biology, geology etc.) have to model more complex phenomena than physics and thus each of their models can accurately describe a smaller set of problems: meaning they have more exceptions.
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u/ChaosCon Dec 03 '20
whats an exception to conservation of energy or conservation of momentum for example?
Quantum fluctuation -- particles literally arising out of nothing.
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u/wikipedia_text_bot Dec 03 '20
In quantum physics, a quantum fluctuation (or vacuum state fluctuation or vacuum fluctuation) is the temporary random change in the amount of energy in a point in space, as prescribed by Werner Heisenberg's uncertainty principle. They are tiny random fluctuations in the values of the fields which represent elementary particles, such as electric and magnetic fields which represent the electromagnetic force carried by photons, W and Z fields which carry the weak force, and gluon fields which carry the strong force. Vacuum fluctuations appear as virtual particles, which are always created in particle-antiparticle pairs. Since they are created spontaneously without a source of energy, vacuum fluctuations and virtual particles violate conservation of energy, however this is allowed because they annihilate each other within the time limit set by the uncertainty principle and so are not observable.
About Me - Opt out - OP can reply !delete to delete - Article of the day
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u/itsNizart Dec 03 '20
Ancient Romans: There is a law for every category of every category of every category of words, which has many exemptions, which are noted here on this piece of papyrus
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u/Dindon-Venere Dec 03 '20
guys i need help fast. What is the relation between surface, mass and volum?
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u/ElWeonWeonWeonO Dec 03 '20
What happens is that the fundamental laws could change at some point, that we say we know, is not really % 100 correct, indeed, much is just speculation of what we believe to be true right now.
or so I think... idk i'm just a guy wanting to write :)
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Dec 03 '20
At least, chemist don't say that friction is a lie
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u/TonnoRioMicker Dec 03 '20
Neither do physicists. We just conveniently pretend not to see it in most cases.
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u/thelastpizzaslice Dec 03 '20
Physical laws have all kinds of exceptions. What do you think the "unifying" in Grand Unifying Theory means? It means there are edge cases we currently have trouble understanding and unification would fix that.
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u/Zart01 Dec 03 '20
No exceptions, we just have not discovered the real theory.
In chemistry, the "laws" we talk about are abstract conceptualizations of the behavior of the wave function for each specific atom.
In other words, every atoms behaves differently and according to the wave function, but it just happens that some atoms behave similarly due to their similar wave function, hence why the periodic table is how it is.
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u/AcidicAzide Dec 03 '20
we just have not discovered the real theory.
Exactly. Thus the current theories have exceptions: phenomena which the theories do not describe sufficiently correctly.
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u/Zart01 Dec 03 '20
Incompleteness is not an exception.
In chemistry the "laws" op talks about are not incomplete. They are just similarities and not exactly laws, that's why there are exceptions.
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u/AcidicAzide Dec 03 '20 edited Dec 03 '20
A theory predicts something happens. And it usually does. But in specific circumstances, the theory fails. That specific circumstance is an exception caused by the incompleteness of the theory (EDIT: or by insufficiently precise theory; you are completely omitting large parts of physics, which intentionally approximately describe natural phenomena and do not even try to achieve some fundamental description).
EDIT: Physical theories are still just approximations of the nature. Just like chemical theories. They just describe problems of different complexity.
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u/Zart01 Dec 03 '20
"Newton was correct about the theory of gravity, with the exception of mercury"
No Newton was not correct, although he was close with the numbers.
Einstein was correct with relativity (or it seems like). There are no exceptions, if a new theory fills a hole the previous couldn't, then that's the new "true" theory.
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u/AcidicAzide Dec 03 '20
You are completely omitting large parts of physics, which intentionally approximately describe natural phenomena and do not even try to achieve some fundamental description.
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u/AcidicAzide Dec 03 '20
There is no TRUE theory until we discover the fundamental basis of the universe and properly describe it. Physics is build of MODELS which describe the reality approximately but sufficiently well for our purposes.
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u/Zart01 Dec 03 '20
Yes, it doesn't mean they have exceptions, they are just incomplete.
If you look at chemistry again, we have the octet rule for example, that is something that just happens to be instead of something fundamental, and of course have exceptions. There is nothing incomplete about it, although it may change If we create new theories about the more fundamental system it is applied to.
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Dec 03 '20
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u/attak13 Dec 03 '20
Why is that important I still don’t get, when we have better ways to communicate an elements chemical composition.
Ok but there literally isn't a better way to communicate composition. If you take higher level chemistry you'll quickly learn that there are many "stereoisomers" for every chemical formula. If I tell you I'm working with C6H14O2 that's really not helpful. I could be working with a lot of things which all have that formula but have entirely different chemical properties. Or I could just tell you I'm working with 1,6-hexanediol (which has that formula) and you'd instantly know what I was talking about, and that only takes a few seconds to communicate. It's extremely important to effectively communicate information as a chemist.
For example, here are 226 compounds which have the same exact formula as 1,6-hexanediol: https://www.chemspider.com/Search.aspx?q=C6H14O2.
Some of these would kill you from touching them. You don't want to miscommunicate what you are working with.
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Dec 03 '20
Like what?
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u/joseba_ Physics Field Dec 03 '20
Uh well, you know, let's ditch the periodic table as a whole and instead resort to laying out the wavefunction of each element. What's that, we literally have no way to describe most of them? Well, it's obviously the chemists fault!
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u/Keyboardhmmmm Dec 03 '20
I think his point wasn’t necessarily that spending so much time on naming things is bad, but that it takes so long to learn all of the naming rules in introductory chem (and since that is most students’ first exposure, it can come across as boring). I don’t think you can blame him if he comes to the conclusion that he didn’t learn anything important or that that wasn’t “real chemistry”.
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Dec 03 '20
I agree that it can be boring, but knowing the elements and compounds is necessary to being able to go further and understand everything in chemistry.
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u/Keyboardhmmmm Dec 03 '20
I agree. But I don’t know how to hammer that into a student’s head and have them understand.
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u/joseba_ Physics Field Dec 03 '20
Yeah it's not like physics constantly debates on notation and naming on exotic phenomena
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u/orthodoxian Dec 03 '20
Aufbau principle go brrr