{"id":2558,"date":"2008-05-02T08:49:48","date_gmt":"2008-05-02T08:49:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/scienceblogs.com\/principles\/2008\/05\/02\/dorky-poll-nonabelian-sciences\/"},"modified":"2008-05-02T08:49:48","modified_gmt":"2008-05-02T08:49:48","slug":"dorky-poll-nonabelian-sciences","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/2008\/05\/02\/dorky-poll-nonabelian-sciences\/","title":{"rendered":"Dorky Poll: Non-Abelian Sciences"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’m going to be busy all day (more or less) at the Steinmetz Symposium<\/a>, listening to talks about the fantastic things our students have been doing with their research projects. So it’s going to be a “talk among yourselves” day here at Uncertain Principles, for the most part.<\/p>\n

It’s been a little while since I ran a Dorky Poll thread, mostly because I’m running low on topics. Here’s one that may be a little too esoteric, inspired by looking at the diploma on my wall:<\/p>\n

\n

Chemical Physics, or Physical Chemistry?<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

For bonus points, what’s the difference between them?<\/p>\n

Also, are there other pairs of liminal sciences where the name ordering makes a difference?<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

(If you didn’t know it already, my Ph.D. is from the Chemical Physics Program at the University of Maryland, College Park, mostly because they had this cool program where you were encouraged to work at NIST. The practical effect of this was mostly that I didn’t need to take either Classical Mechanics or E&M for the quals (I took E&M out of Jackson later, which was definitely a better experience), instead taking a couple of courses in the Chemistry department (Thermodynamics and “Quantum Chemistry” which was basically “Molecular Spectroscopy”).<\/p>\n

(To the extent that they are separable fields, I would say that chemical physics involves the study of smallish molecules by building them up from atomic physics type models, while physical chemistry involves the study of somewhat larger molecules by probing the physics of what holds them together. If you know and care what “hyperfine structure” is, you’re more likely to be a chemical physicist than a physical chemist.<\/p>\n

(But I’m just guessing, really…)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’m going to be busy all day (more or less) at the Steinmetz Symposium, listening to talks about the fantastic things our students have been doing with their research projects. So it’s going to be a “talk among yourselves” day here at Uncertain Principles, for the most part. It’s been a little while since I… Continue reading Dorky Poll: Non-Abelian Sciences<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"1","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,7,11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2558","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-academia","category-physics","category-science","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2558","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2558"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2558\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2558"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2558"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2558"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}