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Well-written article on descriptions of electron (and importantly, nuclei to a lesser degree) behavior and state. A pair of strawmen to knock down in the proce

Well-written article on descriptions of electron (and importantly, nuclei to a lesser degree) behavior and state. A pair of strawmen to knock down in the process, most notably in the title and opening paragraphs; the second half way through, re mass concentration. clouds of moving fluff as a lay description of electrons isn't too bad. I guess the key part is to emphasize charge in addition to mass. Tangent: I'm surprised that, at least according to [this paper by Sebens](https://arxiv.org/abs/2105.11988 https://arxiv.org/abs/2105.11988), Shrodinger's model of the electron wave function corresponding to a charge density (probability aside) is controversial among physicists. I suspect most chemists doing DFT agree with it.

pdonis 3y ago
> Shrodinger's model of the electron wave function corresponding to a charge density (probability aside) is controversial among physicists It's more than "controversial"; it was shown not to work way back in the 1920s. That's why Born's probability interpretation was adopted--it was the only one left standing. > I suspect most chemists doing DFT agree with it. If all you ever have to deal with is atoms and molecules, the Schrodinger charge density interpretation sort of works--it's at least a good enough heuristic for that domain. But quantum mechanics gets applied to lots of other domains besides atoms and molecules. The charge density interpretation breaks down in those other domains, whereas the Born probability interpretation does not. And physicists who had to deal with those other domains figured that out, as noted above, back in the 1920s, which is why Schrodinger's charge density interpretation was discarded, at least as any kind of fundamental aspect of quantum theory.
gus_massa 3y ago
DFT is like it is a cloud of density charge with some aditional weird rules. Or in another words, you must sum many rules to calculate the energy, an one of them is easy to remember because it's the result you'd get from a cloud of density charge.
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pdonis 3y ago

> Shrodinger's model of the electron wave function corresponding to a charge density (probability aside) is controversial among physicists It's more than "controversial"; it was shown not to work way back in the 1920s. That's why Born's probability interpretation was adopted--it was the only one left standing. > I suspect most chemists doing DFT agree with it. If all you ever have to deal with is atoms and molecules, the Schrodinger charge density interpretation sort of works--it's at least a good enough heuristic for that domain. But quantum mechanics gets applied to lots of other domains besides atoms and molecules. The charge density interpretation breaks down in those other domains, whereas the Born probability interpretation does not. And physicists who had to deal with those other domains figured that out, as noted above, back in the 1920s, which is why Schrodinger's charge density interpretation was discarded, at least as any kind of fundamental aspect of quantum theory.

gus_massa 3y ago

DFT is like it is a cloud of density charge with some aditional weird rules. Or in another words, you must sum many rules to calculate the energy, an one of them is easy to remember because it's the result you'd get from a cloud of density charge.

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