About Schrodinger Wave

History & Original Idea

College level course of physical chemistry (I) in Fall 2021 (CHEM301) was taught by Dr. Hutchinson. He is one of the best physical chemistry professors who is very popular among students at Rice university. During a meeting with his teaching assistants (TAs) he expressed that he wished there was an educational simulation software to help students visualize the wavefunction for different potentials and how it changes as the potential energy changes. I was a TA for that course and I expressed my willingness to develop such an application, so I developed this program using MATLAB programming. This quantum chemistry simulator does exactly what professor Hutchinson wished for.

This program plots the wavefunction for any given 1D potential and helps students build an intuition on how the wavefunction behaves for different profiles of potential energy. What happens if your system's potential is symmetric? or asymmetric? What happens if you add a bump in the middle? What happens if you change the potential from harmonic oscillator to Morse oscillator? what if you change the dissociation energy of Morse oscillator? etc.

To learn more about Dr. Hutchinson or me please follow this link. > About the Developer

What about this Logo?

Although this software only simulates the quantum behavior of particles in one dimension, it is very powerful in that it gives you an idea about many physical systems. In fact, chemists and physicists use one dimensional systems frequently to better visualize and understand whats happening in the real N-dimensional world.

This picture is an end view of a carbon nanotube. The motion of electrons along the axis of carbon nanotube can be approximated as a 1-dimensional system. As you model a particle in a one dimensional box system, you can think of it as an electron inside the conjugated pi network of a nanotube.

So, as you work with this software, I am sure that you do not underestimate its power! Neither do I because I work with nanotubes every day. :)

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