No. I’m actually fairly certain I don’t understand Pauling’s work (not least because I haven’t read it!) and I’ll definitely want to have anything I write reviewed by an actual expert, but I do think I’d be able to explain what a “quantum number” really is to high school students in a way that makes more sense to them than my textbook did.
Just give them Griffiths, and you’ll do okay for teaching Quantum Mechanics, but for chemistry … you’re correct, of course, that the Schrödinger equation is what all those heuristics about orbital hybridization are trying to approximate, and sure, you could add some lines emphasizing that at the beginning if it’s not clear, but I don’t think the pedagogy would be improved by dispensing with the heuristics altogether.
Trying to say something like “the solutions to differential equations often include parameters that can take different integer values, and quantum numbers come from those parameters in (approximate?) solutions to the Schrodinger equation” in a way that makes sense to high school students seems difficult but not impossible, and I’m willing to at least try. 🤷♂️
And then I can get into the usual cookbook stuff that students would need to answer the homework problems at the end of the textbook chapter. (Also, unless I’m badly mistaken, almost nobody does chemistry by actually working directly with the Schrodinger equation.)
Are you sure you understand Pauling’s work on the nature of the chemical bond?
No. I’m actually fairly certain I don’t understand Pauling’s work (not least because I haven’t read it!) and I’ll definitely want to have anything I write reviewed by an actual expert, but I do think I’d be able to explain what a “quantum number” really is to high school students in a way that makes more sense to them than my textbook did.
Us physicists never beating the allegations!
Just give them Griffiths, and you’ll do okay for teaching Quantum Mechanics, but for chemistry … you’re correct, of course, that the Schrödinger equation is what all those heuristics about orbital hybridization are trying to approximate, and sure, you could add some lines emphasizing that at the beginning if it’s not clear, but I don’t think the pedagogy would be improved by dispensing with the heuristics altogether.
Trying to say something like “the solutions to differential equations often include parameters that can take different integer values, and quantum numbers come from those parameters in (approximate?) solutions to the Schrodinger equation” in a way that makes sense to high school students seems difficult but not impossible, and I’m willing to at least try. 🤷♂️
And then I can get into the usual cookbook stuff that students would need to answer the homework problems at the end of the textbook chapter. (Also, unless I’m badly mistaken, almost nobody does chemistry by actually working directly with the Schrodinger equation.)