I'm looking for a quantum chemistry book. Not physics, I have a few of
those. Any recommendations? Cheaper would be nice (how's Dover's Szabo
and Ostlund?), but within reason I'd prefer good to cheap.


--
"You're not as dumb as you look. Or sound. Or our best testing
indicates." -- Monty Burns to Homer Simpson

I prefer Hanna - "Quantum Mechanics in Chemistry". It is consise and I
really like its treatment of spectroscopy. Also, I think I paid less than
$15 for it (in 1982 :-) )

Best,
dtn


"Gregory L. Hansen"
wrote in message ...
I'm looking for a quantum chemistry book. Not physics, I have a few of
those. Any recommendations? Cheaper would be nice (how's Dover's Szabo
and Ostlund?), but within reason I'd prefer good to cheap.


--
"You're not as dumb as you look. Or sound. Or our best testing
indicates." -- Monty Burns to Homer Simpson

In article ,
dtn wrote:
I prefer Hanna - "Quantum Mechanics in Chemistry". It is consise and I
really like its treatment of spectroscopy. Also, I think I paid less than
$15 for it (in 1982 :-) )

Okay, thanks for the recommendation.

Actually, a recommendation along with a suggestion or two of books to stay
away from might be most helpful.

I was prompted to find a book on quantum chemistry when I was trying to
learn about photoemission spectroscopy. Of course it's a pretty simple
concept, but doing anything with it requires a fair amount of knowledge of
the materials you're working with. And so authors freely sling around
comments about pi bonds and PI bonds and d_x--d_x symmetry... I know my
quantum mechanics for physicists texts don't talk about that sort of
thing, and I assumed it's introduced in a quantum chemistry text. But I
could have asked if that was really what I needed.

Does quantum chemistry age very quickly? Introductory quantum mechanics
for physicists hasn't changed much in the past few decades, but I gather
condensed matter has seen some important developments since 1982.

I was actually looking at Levine's book (5th ed.), one of Amazon's top
three, because it's a $96 book attractively priced when used. Their
second is the Dover book by Szabo and Ostlund, and at $12.57 I might as
well take a chance and just buy that one along with whatever else I get.
Dover has a lot of not-so-great books, but they're cheap enough that it
really doesn't hurt much to just buy it and see.







Best,
dtn


"Gregory L. Hansen"
wrote in message ...
I'm looking for a quantum chemistry book. Not physics, I have a few of
those. Any recommendations? Cheaper would be nice (how's Dover's Szabo
and Ostlund?), but within reason I'd prefer good to cheap.


--
"You're not as dumb as you look. Or sound. Or our best testing
indicates." -- Monty Burns to Homer Simpson




--
Irony: "Small businesses want relief from the flood of spam clogging their
in-boxes, but they fear a proposed national 'Do Not Spam' registry will
make it impossible to use e-mail as a marketing tool."
http://www.bizjournals.com/houston/s...wscolumn6.html

November 7, 2004

(Gregory L. Hansen) wrote in message :

I'm looking for a quantum chemistry book. Not physics, I have a few of
those. Any recommendations? Cheaper would be nice (how's Dover's Szabo
and Ostlund?), but within reason I'd prefer good to cheap.

Szabo and Ostlund is a great intro - $14.00 new.

On the physics side, Mattuck - $12.00 new.

I used to find them in Borders and Barnes and Noble, but now it's all
freshly minted coffee table fare in there. It smells good, but there's
no caffeine.

Watch the used bookstores near your local world class university.

Thomas Lee Elifritz
http://elifritz.members.atlantic.net

(Gregory L. Hansen) wrote in message ...
I'm looking for a quantum chemistry book. Not physics, I have a few of
those. Any recommendations? Cheaper would be nice (how's Dover's Szabo
and Ostlund?), but within reason I'd prefer good to cheap.

Our digital scanning interpretation and
response unit choked on this one. You
need to provide more info for those of us
who might learn something new.

What's your venue? Not QM but QC, quantum
chemistry, like laser chemistry to make new
molecules, or investigate surfaces, probe
places where the sun don't shine?

And at what level, grad, post doc, some sick
perverted personal interest?

How about Schaum's Outlines, or whoever has
the market at this time?

And on which planet is Indiana located. Do
you get weekends off?


Mark (Sorry, can't be bothered right now; busy
breaking into this plaid SUV :-)

Caveat lector: I'm not a chemist.

(Gregory L. Hansen) writes:

Actually, a recommendation along with a suggestion or two of books to stay
away from might be most helpful.

I know everyone likes Ostlund and Szabo but I found its treatment of
linear algebra too painful to read. I also thought it was careless
about certain distinctions that one needs to make between actual excited
states and what are called excited states in terms of the basis sets.
Admittedly, though, I haven't looked at it recently.

I was prompted to find a book on quantum chemistry when I was trying to
learn about photoemission spectroscopy. Of course it's a pretty simple
concept, but doing anything with it requires a fair amount of knowledge of
the materials you're working with. And so authors freely sling around
comments about pi bonds and PI bonds and d_x--d_x symmetry... I know my
quantum mechanics for physicists texts don't talk about that sort of
thing, and I assumed it's introduced in a quantum chemistry text. But I
could have asked if that was really what I needed.

I was getting private lectures on quantum electrodynamics from a physicist
at a time when I had essentially no background in quantum mechanics. I did
note, however, that anything more complicated than a hydrogen atom seemed
to be too complicated from the physicist's point of view. At that time,
I was browsing in the library and happened on an article of C.A.Coulson,
I think in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, USA,
on the quantum mechanics of hydrochloric acid. I was intrigued that
chemists could talk about stuff like that when physicists apparently
couldn't. I couldn't understand the article with my skimpy background,
but I could tell from the writing that with a little more knowledge I
could probably understand it. Moreover, I found the writing style to
be so clear that I decided that this author must have written a book
and started searching Books in Print to find out what it might be.
That is how I discovered Coulson's Valence, which I subsequently
devoured. I think that with your background you might find it quite
suitable for the relevant concepts. It is a real classic.

By way of contrast, Ostland and Szabo seems to be more oriented towards
computational chemistry and explains ideas badly, in my opinion.

After reading Coulson, you might enjoy Cotton's book on applications
of group theory to chemistry, which is more pleasant than reading the
same material in Decius, Wilson and Cross, "Molecular vibrations: theory
of infrared and Raman vibrational spectra", even though you might want to
read that next once you have understood the context.

Does quantum chemistry age very quickly? Introductory quantum mechanics
for physicists hasn't changed much in the past few decades, but I gather
condensed matter has seen some important developments since 1982.

I don't think the content has changed much. There have been improvements
in computational techniques. That's something I haven't read enough about.
When you use software, e.g. GAMESS or MOPAC, everyone will assume you know
what MINDO and other similar looking acronyms mean and what all the different
designations are for Gaussian basis sets. I'm not sure what the best place
is to read about these things if one doesn't want to have to guess at a
lot of the terminology in the software manuals. Also, these computations
are something of an art, very sensitive to which basis sets and which options
one selects. As far as I know, one learns this on the streets.

Another book I enjoyed very much was Bader's book "Atoms in Molecules",
which seeks to define the space occupied by atoms in molecules, the boundaries
between them, and the bonds by using ideas from dynamical systems.
I haven't looked at it recently, but my recollection is that Bader looks
at the gradient of the electron density function produced by the Schroedinger
equation, then defines the atoms to be the basins of attraction of that
vector field, etc. Nice graphics, nice explanation of 3 way bonds to
pseudo-atoms in the case of boron hydrides. There is also free software,
using GAMESS or, I think, MOPAC as a front end, for doing such computations
on your own.

I guess my taste runs along the lines of reading classics and avoiding
textbooks. In that spirit, you might like to read Linus Pauling's The
Nature of the Chemical Bond; Slater's books on quantum theory of atoms,
of molecules, of molecules and solids; Ingold's books on structure and
mechanism in organic chemistry.

I think it is also desirable to read 19th century chemistry in order
to appreciate the considerable background that enabled to recognize
the correctness of the explanations of quantum mechanics. People have
a tendency to write off the 19th century and earlier, since the truths
of quantum mechanics didn't appear until the 20th century, but I think
that is a big mistake. Incidentally, in Partington's 5 volume Advanced
Treatise On Physical Chemistry (his 4 volume History of Chemistry is
also well worth reading), he mentions that he can rely on some of the
19th century spectroscopic data because he is sufficiently expert in
their experimental techniques to know which results are reliable and
which are not.

I was actually looking at Levine's book (5th ed.), one of Amazon's top
three, because it's a $96 book attractively priced when used. Their
second is the Dover book by Szabo and Ostlund, and at $12.57 I might as
well take a chance and just buy that one along with whatever else I get.
Dover has a lot of not-so-great books, but they're cheap enough that it
really doesn't hurt much to just buy it and see.

Instead of throwing money at the problem by buying books in haste and
repenting at leisure, get them from the library and try to read them.
There may not be enough time to complete them, but probably enough to
decide whether to buy them. And the effort is usually not wasted in
any case. Go to the library and try to find the book that seems to
speak to you. Just because Coulson's writing appealed to me doesn't mean
it will suit your taste.

Also, libraries sometimes have book sales and one can sometimes get good
deals cheap. Also, some of the books you might find online might be available
cheaper online used.

I also had some pleasant experiences recently watching some videos on
organic chemistry produced by The Standard Deviants, entitled The Deep
Fried World of Organic Chemistry. Most of the jokes are stupid and it
is very selective in what it does explain, but I think it was helpful to
watch it. Libraries might have it.
--
Ignorantly,
Allan Adler
* Disclaimer: I am a guest and *not* a member of the MIT CSAIL. My actions and
* comments do not reflect in any way on MIT. Also, I am nowhere near Boston.

In article ,
Allan Adler wrote:
Caveat lector: I'm not a chemist.

Nevertheless, thank you for your detailed reply.


(Gregory L. Hansen) writes:

Actually, a recommendation along with a suggestion or two of books to stay
away from might be most helpful.

I know everyone likes Ostlund and Szabo but I found its treatment of
linear algebra too painful to read. I also thought it was careless
about certain distinctions that one needs to make between actual excited
states and what are called excited states in terms of the basis sets.
Admittedly, though, I haven't looked at it recently.

I've got linear algebra in lots of places, I'm not worried about that.


I was prompted to find a book on quantum chemistry when I was trying to
learn about photoemission spectroscopy. Of course it's a pretty simple
concept, but doing anything with it requires a fair amount of knowledge of
the materials you're working with. And so authors freely sling around
comments about pi bonds and PI bonds and d_x--d_x symmetry... I know my
quantum mechanics for physicists texts don't talk about that sort of
thing, and I assumed it's introduced in a quantum chemistry text. But I
could have asked if that was really what I needed.

I was getting private lectures on quantum electrodynamics from a physicist
at a time when I had essentially no background in quantum mechanics. I did
note, however, that anything more complicated than a hydrogen atom seemed
to be too complicated from the physicist's point of view. At that time,

Yep. The physicist solves the hydrogen atom, then spends a lot of time
looking at things like fine and hyperfine structure, and Stark and other
effects. And that's about as far as he goes with that. At least until
the class on solid state theory, but even then they tend to just take a
crystal geometry as a given and don't talk much about chemical bonding.

Thanks for the advice.
--
"Experiments are the only means of knowledge at our disposal. The rest is
poetry, imagination." -- Max Planck

In article ,
Mark Tarka wrote:
(Gregory L. Hansen) wrote in message
...
I'm looking for a quantum chemistry book. Not physics, I have a few of
those. Any recommendations? Cheaper would be nice (how's Dover's Szabo
and Ostlund?), but within reason I'd prefer good to cheap.

Our digital scanning interpretation and
response unit choked on this one. You
need to provide more info for those of us
who might learn something new.

What's your venue? Not QM but QC, quantum
chemistry, like laser chemistry to make new
molecules, or investigate surfaces, probe
places where the sun don't shine?

And at what level, grad, post doc, some sick
perverted personal interest?

How about Schaum's Outlines, or whoever has
the market at this time?

And on which planet is Indiana located. Do
you get weekends off?


Mark (Sorry, can't be bothered right now; busy
breaking into this plaid SUV :-)

Uh, I prompted by the study of photoemission spectroscopy, and I
realized there was a vocabulary of chemical bonds and symmetries and etc.
that was assumed, but that I lack. I'm trying to learn about materials,
so it seemed like the sort of thing I should know. My exact requirements
are actually a little bit vague. Call it the post doc level, for someone
that did nuclear physics as a grad. And Indiana is scheduled to return to
Earth in a few weeks, I'm expected there on the 16th, but I have no idea
where it is at the present time.

--
"Is that plutonium on your gums?"
"Shut up and kiss me!"
-- Marge and Homer Simpson

(Gregory L. Hansen) wrote in message ...
I'm looking for a quantum chemistry book. Not physics, I have a few of
those. Any recommendations? Cheaper would be nice (how's Dover's Szabo
and Ostlund?), but within reason I'd prefer good to cheap.

Interesting, I just bought today "Elements of Quantum Mechanics with
Chemical Applications" by Jean Barriol (translated from the original edition
in French in 1971). I paid only $3 for it at Half Price books.

Not sure how it compares with other books though...

Thanks, Paul