VendingMenace

lol...stupid me. I did mean to say "more" when i wrote "less" instead. I think swansont has cleared up this confusion. Wow, that was dumb (on my part). I guess...though post#11 makes it pretty clear that he was talking about the vibrations of the molecule. Whatever. This discussion has way outlived its usefullness, i think it is clear that vibrations and rotations are usually not of the energy required for the breaking of a chemical bond or the overcomming of a activation energy...at least not anything that anyone has thought of yet. THough, i have been thinking about this and there seems to be a few cases where this might not be the case... 1) If you count the temperature being raised in solution by vibrational and rotational transitions (ie. in a microwave). 2) Perhaps in a very unstable molecule like tetrazine vibrational excitment *might* lead to decomposition. But i really don't know. 3) In redox systems that are undergoing self-exchange of electrons, if the system is strongly coupled enough, then there can be a phenomenon called vibrational coupling, where the electron transfer event can depend strongly on the vibrational modes of the molecule. I think that is it for now. At least that is what i have come up with so far... To answer 5614; Vibrational transitions can be accompanied by rotational transitions. and Electronic transitions can be accompanied by vibronic transitions.

Fair enough. I am not sure myself. I think it is highly unlikely, but I do not really know, which is why i ask silkworm what he was thinking of, since he made the above claim. Just curious is all, really.

You are correct. However' date=' UV light excites an [i']electronic[/i] transition which is accompanied by a vibronic and rotational transition. I had ask for an example of a purely vibrational or rotational transition providing the requisite activation energy. The only example that I can think of that even comes close might be in some isomerizations (ie. switching between chair conformations in a hexane molecule) however, this is much more a physical process than a chemical process, which is what I think we were discussing.

For swansont: Which molecular vibrational transitions are abosorb or emit visible light? Can you give an example? I can't think of any off the top of my head and would like to know what they are (cause that seems kinda cool -- so REALLY high energy vibrations).

If you can provide me with a list of chemical processes that are affected by light that excites purely vibrational/rotational transitions' date=' then sure. I will accept that given enough infrared light, one can heat up a reaction to the point that you have supplied the requisite activation energy, however,.... emphasis mine -- reading "the vibrations it causes can do useful work overcomming an activation barrier" So, i would love to hear some examples where purely vibrational events provide the activation energy or lead to decomposition. I am not saying that it doesn't happen, just that I know of no examples were it does...

if it provides the activation energy, then it MUST affect the rate of the reaction, by definition. consider this, DNA is a fairly stable molecule and left in liquid it will retain the phosphate backbone linkages for a fiar amount of time (days). However, if you put DNA into a sonicator (a water bath through which high energy sound is pumped), you can break it up into many tiny pieces, effectively speeding up the process of degredation (breaking of the phospate bonds). So, yes, sound can affect the rate of a reaction. I cannot think of anyway that sound would effect the equilibrium of a reaction (at least not of the top of my head) but that is a very interesting question. I will think more about it.

Not true. Light only travels at c in a vacum. When a photon is passing though any other medium, then it travels slower. Ie. light travels slower through glass, and different wavelengths are slowed differently. This is why a prisim splits light into a spectrum. What we know from Eistein is that nothing can travel faster than c. In fact, we don't even know this. What we know is that nothing initially traveling slower than c can be accelerated to a speed faster than c.

dude, that sounds like a great assignment, pogos. Seriously. Of course i kinda felt the same way when i was in HS. It wasn't until i was starting grad school that my eyes were really opened to what was going on in literature. Now i love the stuff. It is funny how your opinons and thoughts change over time. On another note, i think it is a good idea to have classes that are subjectively graded. Not everything in life is objective. You will have bosses that tell you to do things their way, just becuase, and you had better figure it out or theguy next door is going to get the raise/promotion/recognition. English and art classes in HS are a great way to learn how to "read" an athority figure and be able to produce what they want. perhaps not the most rewarding thing you will ever have to do, but a good skill to posess nonetheless.

x axis has the non imaginary parts while the y axis has the imaginary parts. So if you have a number 25 + 32i you would graph a point at (25, 32i). Does that make sense?

no, i don't think it is a sociophobia or anything like that. Agrophobia is simply the fear that you cannot get to somewhere "safe." At least as I understand it. Thus, large crowds can trigger it, because it would most difficult to find a place away from the crowd. It is not nessesarily that you are afriad of the individuals in it, per se, but rather that there is no way to get away from the crowd and to somewhere safe. I think that crowds in general trigger lots of phobias. Social ones, agrophobia, claustrophobia, and people with illness/germ phobias as well.

not true' date=' there are [b']five[/b] choices a) monera b) protista c) Fungi d) plant e) animal last three are pretty self explanitory, i think. THe first one is unicellular organisms with no nucleus the second is unicellular (mainly -- some of them form collonies ie. algea) organisms wich have a nucleous. just wanted to clear that up