Index

Animated gifs representing classical and quantum pictures of light. A page with animated gifs to convey the essential difference between the classical view of light beams as continuous electric (and magnetic) field oscillations and the quantum view of light made up of wave packets called photons.  The first of these pages discusses intensity of light, and the second shows differences in wavelengths lightwaves/diffwavelen.htm .

Travelling electron wave - animated gifs along with explanation of the DeBroglie wave concept of electrons

Photon vs. Electron wave - animated gifs comparing a photon wavefunction to an electron wave function (in a 2-dimensional world).

Bohr Atom and n=1 to n=3 light absorption - a gif showing an electron in n=1 orbit being promoted to n=3 orbit by absorption of a photon.

An EXCEL spreadsheet for calculating and displaying hydrogen-like wavefunctions - this link explains the spreadsheet and shows some screen shots taken from the spreadsheet. It also explains the functional form of the various solutions to the Schroedinger equation for H-like atoms.

• Animated gif of 3d_z2 orbital generated using the EXCEL spreadsheet described above. This shows 21 successive "slices" of psi and psi^2 ranging from 2 Å behind to 2 Å in front of the plane containing the nucleus. The z axis is the vertical axis. (Note, because of the way the spreadsheet is set up, the z and y directions are switched around on the spreadsheet. To convert to the conventional representation of a 3d_z2 orbital, think of the vertical direction on the screen as being the z direction, and where it says "z(slice)", think of this as being the y coordinate of the slices that are being shown.
• Snapshots -hybrid orbitals (shows how adding up multiples of atomic orbitals gives rise to hybrid orbital shapes used in Organic Chemistry) - do not need EXCEL to view this page Download
• atomic orbital spreadsheet
• Download sigma bond workbook
• Download pi bond workbook
• Download hybrid orbital workbook