@LordStryker @MARamezani Thanks for all the praise... I am blushing right here.

I like our little community here, since I joined there has been positive development, but unfortunately also some ridiculous shenanigans I could have missed.

Tex.se was the one that brought me here... whenever I had troubles with my thesis I fired up the google and landed there. And when I finally hit the spot where I did not find an answer I just asked and was helped almost immediately. That's brilliant. A lot of them are developers, too, so you are at the source. Man I love tex, I would love to use it more often... but it is back to word for me :(

@LordStryker Good luck with your exam tomorrow (today)! Crush some fresh(wo)men hearts for me, will you? I somehow miss the teaching a little... my children ;)

@LordStryker I am a typical (terrible) student in physics .... I don't ever read the book, I expect to get good grades despite not studying, etc. etc. ... but it is the opposite with chemistry! Haha :p

Also what do you teach LordStryker?

@Dissenter General Chemistry!

The most general chemistry in the world!

@LordStryker Hi! And NOOOOOOOO!

??

Teaching general chemistry...

Guys, why are 2s and 2p energy differences a lot in O and F?

compared to...?

Oh, I'm talking about the reason of the order in Afbau principle in MOs of O2 and F2. (I'm supposed to learn the thing some years later) where Mortimer said that sp mixing doesn't happen because of relatively higher energy differences of 2s and 2p in these in comparison to for example N2.

Right. s-p mixing disappears after nitrogen so you get a different energy order of the orbitals

Oh, what I'm asking is: Why is there that energy difference that causes the disappearance of sp mixing?

The nuclei of the lighter atoms have less 'pull' on the surrounding orbitals. They don't hold on to them as tightly so they sit further away from the nucleus allowing them to mix.

At O2 and F2 the effect of the attraction between the nuclei and the s orbitals are significant enough to eliminate the mixing.

@LordStryker How is this significance measured? (Forgive if I'm a bit too much like an enthusiastic little kindergarten chemist)

Well I suppose there are a variety of ways to measure this. I would approach the problem by using electronic structure theory by computing the energies of the MOs for each diatomic. From that you would see the significant differences/similarities in the energies of the MOs.

Hmm, maybe I should do more studying.

After some chatting! :P

in ELL and here.

Well, okay so... with Hartree Fock theory, you take linear combinations of atomic orbitals to create molecular orbitals (LCAO-MO method). Thats what MO theory is right? Just combining AOs to make MOs.

You can solve these eigenvalue equations and get the energies for the MOs.

Thanks. Btw how were the exams? Did they shed any tears (of victory)?

ha

the exam is today in a few hours

I'm dreading it and compeltely nervous

(I always get nervous when my kids take my exams)

I had an email last night from a particular student saying... "Is the exam tomorrow?"

And this, ladies and gentlemen, summarizes the type of student I deal with a majority of the time....

Haha, hopefully you're feeling like this:

And I'm saying:

haha thanks :D I want them to succeed. I don't want them to fail. :( But I won't lower my standards to set them up for failure later on.

I usually say people deserve what they get.

Unless there's cheating.

:)

They absolutely do deserve what they get

Um, can people cheat in your observation? Just curious. :P

if they get caught cheating, they deserve to be run out of this university and trust me, I would pursue that until the end of days

Of course people can cheat

Large lecture halls means scantron based exams which means all you need to do is glance at your neighbor's scantron to cheat

Hehe.

I wanted to see your reaction.

I generally walk around the room so I look for the cheating (wandering eyes, hidden cheat sheets, etc)

My kids know the consequences of cheating. I said that I abhor cheaters and that I will ruin them if I ever catch one. I said that I've never caught one yet but to trust me that you dont want to be the first.

@LordStryker Just like our chemistry teacher. Your manners remind me of him. Pure gentlemen.

You know, many kids don't realize this but word gets around. We professors hear what's going on and students keep us in the loop. A couple of students were planning on cheating for one of my exams. I had physical evidence of the planning (courtesy of a student and technology these days). Right before the exam I launched into a very short tirade about cheating. It involved yelling and some heated emotion. Needless to say, these two did not cheat on that exam. :)

I didnt call them out, I just said that anyone planning on cheating to consider this their last chance to decide before I handed out the exam.

And thank you sir. I take that as a compliment.

Oh yes. I'm excited about the idea of catching a cheater but I hope that never has to happen.

Spontaneous cheating is one thing. You're under a lot of stress, you freak out... whatever... and you make a poor decision in the spur of the moment.

Pre-meditated cheating... where you've carefully planned your approach to cheating... that is a whole other story

both will have consequences but the latter guarantees that I will do everything I can to destroy you

I never thought teachers differentiate cheating.

Some don't. Some do.

Its easier to not draw a line between types of cheating.

But I don't think its worth someone's future career based on one fleeting poor decision

as opposed to someone who deliberately and carefully planned the act

wandering eyes... likely a short term poor decision

cheat sheets or coming up with a system... you're done

Fun fact: Martin earned the first "pundit".

@Martin definitely earned every single bit of his rep.

I'm having a hard time imagining him blushing!

HA!

Dude is humble man. I don't have a hard time imagining him blushing.

Its unfortunate he's in such a different time zone.

He's fine I guess. He gets to do reviewing more than most of us. :P

Haha yeah he's a modification fiend!

I'm gonna pass his edit counts!

Go for it! We need active users like you.

I was active once. Then I started my post-doc.

I've been around since the launch of beta :\

One thing I've learned is that there are far more intelligent people on this site than me... and people with a command of a wide berth of Chemistry.

So I generally target the computational chemistry questions and just lurk around the rest.

So what are you going to do once you dominate high school @MARamezani?

I wanna be a doctor, actually. It has some chemistry sense, enough not to make me evade, and it's the best job to have in Iran, if you've got the guts to do the studies.

medical doctor?

Yes, probably. It's just so much ahead I haven't made my mind 100 % about it, but it's a doctor, either a surgeon, a medical doctor, a boring university professor etc.

BORING?!

>:|

Not targeting anyone! I just wanted to show the width of the scope of the indecisiveness I have.

we are not boring :(

You aren't.

only the tenured ones are ;)

Being at chemistry.SE just proves that.

And those answers...OMG you AREN'T BORING!

Have you chatted with @GeoffHutchison? He's a prof at U. of Pittsburgh and a really swell guy.

Well he left some "too chatty" comments. :)

?

That's the most recent I remember.

You should remind him nicely that we are all waiting eagerly for Avogadro2

But I'm sure he's been tied up building his new repository

@GeoffHutchison We're waiting eagerly for Avogadro2!

:)

I think the release is still on track for "soon"

Soon as in "chemistry is graduating soon"? Well then, you should wait a year or so. :)

More like 5-10 years :)

Oh god, I just emptied my coffee pot.

...need...more...coffee....

As a computational chemist I always say that the only REAL chemistry that I do is make coffee.

And I'm becoming exceedingly efficient at it. :)

Oh I don't see Dave that much around these days.

You missed it.

He just suddenly started answering everything at hand.

Must be a symptom of knowing. :P

Then he and his answers faded like shooting stars.

It is indeed a severe problem. Unfortunately I have not yet exhibited this symptom.

Ahhhh, @Martin. Remember the days of UncleAl and Aditya/ADG? :)

Good for you. I think Dave barely survived that attack. Who says heart attacks are dangerous?

I hope Dave didnt have a heart attack...

UncleAl? I remember the guy's answering really awesomely!

What about ADG?

Al was cryptic, condescending, and very political. It was unfortunate.

Wow really?

ADG didn't play nice and really irked a bunch of users.

I'm sure there is more historical drama to be talked about but only those two come to mind at the moment.

I really like TeX

TeX community is best community.

I haven't dropped in and said hello in probably a year. :(

Oh his meta posts are a reminder of what questions not to ask. :P

You should have seen some of the his stuff that got deleted.

Oh but now chemistry.SE's a bit peaceful you've gotta admit. Did he offend anyone really?

You just don't tell someone who has their PhD to "oh you dont understand what I'm saying? You should just go talk to your teacher about <insert topic here>..."

Zero respect. Zero class. And didn't take too kindly to constructive criticism.

Oh, that's not nice.

(he didnt say that to me... it was toward someone else)

haha I probably shouldn't. I'm sure the person who it was directed at will read this and they can decide whether or not to expound or not.

I think it was the blatant plagiarism that finally got him the suspension though.

I warned him about it but he didn't want to listen.

Dang it. :( :) But it was getting interesting. I understand that some questions are asked in high school which are unacceptable in higher education chemistry.

A recent one caused some confusion and troubles.

I didn't have a problem with the questions he asked. I only had a problem with the plagiarized responses, erroneous responses, and rude comments he left.

What did he exactly plagiarize from? :O I wanna know for future plagiarism use. :P

Though I always detest plagiarism.

Well Jonsca put him in enough suspension for him to be a lesson. The suspension hasn't ended yet!

Well the supension was up and then it was immediately dished out again

which was interesting

Haha!

He copied and pasted large sections of information from the internet and the way he wrote his answers it sounded like he was claiming that it was his own knowledge.

Whole paragraphs were plagiarized.

That's, just novice. ;) Though I get to answers after studying internet. I always put sources, and I indicate that I learnt, and use blockquotes, so I'm free of charge, I guess. The good thing about me answering is that I learn some things.

If you copy it, you cite it. Its as simple as that. Clearly we discuss chemistry in general where we don't cite things but these are cases where its understood that the information is common knowledge.

So you see, there aren't any strict copyright laws in here, so I always overreact not to blunder legally (literally)

Anyhow yes the Uncl ... what a funny Guy... and the other one.... well that was/is a funny one as well. The comments... I mean I took a screenshot... and i am much too lazy for shenanigans like this...

Hi @Martin!

What did UncleAl discuss about?

@MARamezani we are operating on a strict cc license here, everything that is not properly cited is against copyright....

Well some of his answers were just dois and sometimes a sentence no one understood. Even the political parts i sometimes did not get a 5hing...

Yeah so I've heard. SO CEOs buycotted GoDaddy because of the copyright act unsupportedness.

Sorry for mistakes, i am on mobile

You can edit them!

The proper way is to delete plagiarism... keeping track of editing is hard enough, you do nit want to search for plagiarism all the time to insert the reference

Martin, I've searched the net and found most of you guys, but I couldn't find two cools: Emperor ron and Dave.

Oh let me do a search again.

They really did some work on the chat for mobile... i just hope they implement it in the app

Well.. i am not a secret.. i have no idea about ron and Dave though, but they have good knowledge and every response from them feels like being knighted ...

Dammit! Why are there so many Ron named chemists?!

@LordStryker are you on researchgate?

Haha... common.. even in only organic chemistry, where i would suspect his roots...

Is it enough reasoning?