Physics with Calculus/Introduction/For Chemists

Chemistry as a science has benefited greatly from the development of physics. Physics has provided chemistry with many direct observations of ideas that were only previously theorized. For example, Avogadro's number was directly calculated by the observation of the decay of radioactive elements. The fundamental reasons for the structure of the periodic table were understood with the development of quantum mechanics. Linus Pauling's seminal work The Nature of the Chemical Bond solved complex chemical bonds using quantum mechanics. Many of the powerful tools that chemistry uses to probe the nature of matter rely on the application of physical principles. The richness of chemistry can only be appreciated as one comes to understand the foundations that it inherited from physics and the power these ideas have in pushing chemistry forward as it tries to solve problems in both the physical and biological worlds.

Since chemistry and physics have many things in common, the skills and techniques that are learned in the study of each discipline complement each other.