Physics v Chemistry. This Time it’s Personal …
Experimental Error: Physics vs Chemistry: Fight!
I often contemplate the differences between these two areas of study. Also, I hear fellow undergrads argue for one or the other, usually divided along the lines of their respective major. Anymore, I think they’re so interrelated that I find it hard to find a difference between the two, except for the phases of matter that they most often deal with.
Same? Different? I think we should forget that, team up, and beat the crap out of biology.
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If you need an aspirin and you retain a physicist, it will be too big to swallow and be made of steel. If you need a timepiece and you retain a chemist, you’ll only get 80% of it (admittedly crystalline).
Physicists make rules, chemists make stuff, engineers makes things. Chose whom you will, theorists boast promiscuity while empiricists pay child support.
Apologies for treating this topic seriously but I think it is a mistake to think of chemistry and physics as indistinguishable. Chemistry deals at a more macroscopic level and has many distinctive features of its own. Since the 1990s philosophers of chemistry have begun to think about this issue and have discussed the question of whether chemistry ‘reduces’ to quantum physics. The conclusion is a qualified NO !
See publications by Scerri, van Brakel, Baird etc.
My own book on the subject is (Eric Scerri, The Periodic Table, Its Story and Its Significance, Oxford University Press, 2007). Here I examine the development of the periodic system and the extent to which it is or is not fully explained by quantum mechanics. Comments welcome.
eric scerri