Do We Need Quantum Mechanics?

Faith & Science Conversation
21

How is a polar bond “described” by chemistry and “explained” by QM?

PS: I’d say QM is parroting chemistry while chemistry is doing all the explaining.

22

I asked AI . . .

The bonding in a water molecule is influenced by quantum interactions, particularly through hydrogen bonds that involve the sharing of electronic charge between hydrogen and oxygen atoms. These quantum effects are crucial for understanding the unique properties of water.

BTW, a polar bond is the result of quantum behavior.

Nope –

Given that QM explains things that chemistry says can’t happen (like our sun, for example), you’ve got it backwards.
Another example: chemistry can’t explain the structure of electron orbitals; with QM, the structure is obvious and emerges from basic rules of QM.

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23

Gilbert Lewis has already explained what QM set out to do. His theory is static electrons and protons that take up a rectangular pattern. While QM copied his work with circular orbits.

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Gilbert Lewis is literally the founder of QM. QM invented nothing that he already did not explain.

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Fission and fusion were unknown at the time when QM was invented (late 20s). Prior to this, conventional science in the form of Chemistry accounted for all chemical bonds which were invented and explained mainly by Gilbert Lewis.

All you needed at the time was Coloumb’s law. Protons, electrons, a periodic table, Gilbert Lewis and spectroscopy. What’s wrong with this picture?

26

Problems with QM.

  1. Self energy tends to infinity

  2. Elementary particles like electrons have a size of zero.

There are so many issues with QM that I don’t feel like listing them here. You should look them up yourself.

27

Man, I appreciate this forum and the ability to engage with others.

I do so on my MacBook Pro.

Could such an instrument exist as such with the knowledge of chemistry but not the knowledge of quantum mechanics?

28

False. Lewis can be credited with:

  • the 1916 electron-pair theory of the chemical bond
  • the Lewis structure
  • the octet rule
  • the idea of chemical bonding in terms of shared electron pairs
  • the concept of the covalent bond in essentially its modern conceptual form

He had explanations for none of it – it took QM to figure out why those happen.

It was like playing with TinkerToys, putting them together but with no explanation for why the different pieces fit in the first place.

29

You’re confusing mathematical modeling with what the theory actually says – well, in the QED form it has become.

30

This thread is over for me.

Edit: some mod will look at this and the next post will be, I’m locking this thread. Be my guest.

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31

More problems with QM

  1. Protons never move in QM only electrons move as in they “jump”.

  2. What is the jump time from one branch to another? Is it instantaneous or greater than zero?

  3. Renormalization is not science. It’s crank physics.

You have to find out why an elementary particle’s size is zero. It’s not for mathematical modelling. You will need to look for the answer your self. Hint: It has something to do with real physical spin or angular velocity of something that jumps instantaneously from one branch to another. No bananas if you miss this.

32

But quantum phenomena also calls for an explanation. I do love this quote from Feynman:

“This thing cannot keep on going so that we are always going to discover more and more new laws. If we do, it will become boring that there are so many levels one underneath the other.”

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33

I agree. Nothing like an instantaneous jumping electron and a stationary proton.

34

Can somebody care to explain how or why the Earth can have a De Broglie wave in QM?

35

It’s turtles all the way down. But the approximations seem to get better

36

We had this presented in undergrad chem (maybe 2nd semester organic). I can’t recall if it was also reviewed in the 2nd or 3rd year quantum chemistry / phys chem course.

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And the rules get simpler.

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The idea of quantization was put forth by Max Plank in around 1905 as a way to explain the wavelength distribution of black-body radiation. That explanation needed a constant we now call Plank’s constant Neils Bohr had the good fortune to be in England when Ernest Rutherford put forth the idea that the atom was mostly empty and consisted of a small nucleus surrounded by electrons. Bohr, in the light of the proton-electron view of the hydrogen atom conjured up the Bohr model of the atom using Plank’s constant and other fundamental constants to describe the line spectra, well known in spectroscopy for a long time, from the hydrogen atom. That formula had Z, the charge on the nucleus as one of the parameters. For sure, classical science has NO WAY to explain the line spectra from various elements. And, then, the double yellow lines in sodium called for yet another quantum number. Bohr started out with just two quantum numbers, n, the principle quantum number, and l, the orbital quantum number. Sommerfeld then added the magnetic quantum number to account for the 2 lines in sodium.

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39

I believe the correct hobbit allusion is “a few mushrooms short of a basket”. At least if you’ve read the books.

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40

Robin Williams described being “a few tacos short in a combo platter”.

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