I suppose I'd better do something to explain the picture I have for this page. For those scientifically inclined it is the 3dz2 orbital density plot. It is one of many places of mystery that I found in my studies in chemistry.
For some people, the explanation of things by science can cause a reduction in the level of beauty or wonder in them. For me, the further that I delved into science the more things I found that were full of beauty and wonder. Whether they are the wonderful balances seen in ecology or the absolute perfection seen in the properties of certain chemicals for life, I found they added to rather than removed from my sense of faith. I believe that science and wonder can co-exist, I see no difference in the wonder of God parting the Red Sea by miraculous event or by the extremely coincidental event of a major undersea land collapse occurring at the most absolutely opportune time (as was offered as a debunking of this story by an atheist friend to me last year). What's most important to me is that I don't let petty debates about mechanisms of God's activity either get in the way of approaching the world of science with rationality or, most importantly, from approaching my relationship with God through faith in Christ crucified.
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2 comments:
When I get back you can explain the 3dz2 to me a little more. I am interested.
No worries Linda, I'm looking forwards to seeing you at college again. You missed out on media and communications, it was pretty good. Someone taught me how to blog, and an old chemistry lecturer of mine taught us about webpages. Gerry gave us some more good stuff on visuals and Phil Smith from the ABC was pretty good also.
Your question probably deserves an explanation on the blog, so I'll give it a go.
Our imaging of where electrons are comes from solution of Shrodinger's equations. These only give probabilities that look like a cloud. Where the picture image is densest the electron is most likely.
The first number is the electron shell level, if you look at the first line of the periodic table this is line 1.
The letter is the complexity level of the orbital. The first level is in the simplest level (s) which is shaped as a simple sphere and contains two electrons.
Once the 1s and 2s levels are filled, the 2p level begins. This is why there are 8 elements on the second line of the periodic table. There are 3 different p orbitals and they are shaped like dumbbells oriented along the notional axes of the atom. Each of these can contain two electrons and are labelled 2px, 2py, and 2pz. One electron stays on one side, and the other on the other side. I wish I could put pictures in to explain.
http://www.chemistry.nmsu.edu/studntres
/chem111/resources/notes/atomic_orbitals.html
does contain this information graphically.
When we have all of the 3s and 3p orbitals filled, electrons go into the d orbitals. These 5 orbitals only appear on the third line and later on the periodic table. For four out of the five orbitals, they look like a crossed set of dumbbells with an electron in each dumbbell. These are 3dxy, 3dxz, 3dyz and 3dx2-y2.
Then we have our hero, the joker in the pack, 3dx2. This is the first orbital which looks at all unusual. The dumbbell on the x axis contains one electron, but there is the torus (donut) that contains an electron just circling around its centre. Through all this complexity and mathematics comes an object of beauty that is just so different to its contemporaries.
The f orbitals get even wierder when they appear in the next row, but I like the simplicity in the first of the kind.
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