(June 8)
I arrived in Boston Monday evening, wide-eyed and excited to get to know the area, the people, and the research.
The first thing that absolutely blew my mind about this place - the experience that I'll write about in this post - went thuslywise:
It was my first day on the streets of Cambridge/Boston. I took the red line of the subway system to Massachusetts Avenue, hoping to keep my sense of direction (it was very cloudy, I was surrounded by buildings, and had only a vague sense of North).
I climbed the stairs winding up to the sidewalk thinking about the path I needed to follow, and the address I wanted to find. I stopped for a moment to look around and noticed a group of joggers coming my way. I didn't want to be a bother, so I moved aside a bit. I was surprised, as they went by, to hear what they were talking about: molecular orbitals! Some small talk, eh?
I felt right at home!
For those of you interested, molecular orbital theory is a really cool way of understanding molecular structure and bonding. Traditionally we use tools like Lewis structures which allow quick recognition of shape and composition. But Lewis structures depict electrons in a molecule, no matter how large a molecule, as being around one (or two) atoms.
In molecular orbital theory, you do away with that, and you start to think about electrons as "averaged out," or "spread out" throughout the whole molecule.
It's really very interesting.
How cool is that? The first thing I hear coming out of the subway station is a concept of physics and chemistry? Neat! It might just be one of my geek moments, but that just blew me away.
RVM
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