User:Paul Wormer

I retired in 2005 from the Radboud University in Nijmegen (The Netherlands) as an Associate Professor in Theoretical Chemistry. Over the years I (co)authored about 150 research papers published in journals as "the Journal of Chemical Physics", "Molecular Physics", "Physical Review A", etc., see here for a fairly complete list. I got a (cum laude) MSc in Chemical Engineering, but after an internship at a Haber-Bosch plant I decided that Theoretical Chemistry was more my cup of tea. My (cum laude) Ph.D. thesis was on Group Theory and the Theory of Intermolecular Forces; both topics still hold my interest. Most of my working life was on the crossing of Chemistry, Molecular Physics, and Applied Mathematics. Several times I held an appointment as a Visiting Research Professor in Applied Mathematics at the University of Waterloo in Ontario. I was a Visiting Fellow of the Royal Society in Bristol and a Visiting Professor of Theoretical Chemistry in Warsaw.

From October 2006 until August 2007 I contributed to Wikipedia under the name P.wormer. After my relatively late arrival at WP I found that most basic science articles were already in existence, so I added mostly to the niche of more advanced, graduate level, science. After a probation period of nine months I got fed up with continuously defending my work against attacks by science illiterates and fled to Citizendium. On CZ I soon discovered that this encyclopedia was almost virginal and that the foundation in science still had to be laid. So, I will add as many basic science articles as I can to CZ.

I am not a native speaker of English and appreciate it very much when my grammar/spelling/wording is improved. I hate it, however, when content that I contributed is removed without good explanation (in the associated talk page or my personal talk page). So, please, if you feel it necessary to delete some of my work (and possibly replace it with something else), explain to me why you think so. I may even agree with you! In Wikipedia I was sometimes criticized as being too abstruse and I had to agree with that several times, after which I tried to do a better job. So, please let me know if you don't understand my writings; together we can make something nice.

Note to self

Don't waste time on articles in the following ("peer reviewed") journals:

• Apeiron
• Galilean Electrodynamics
• Materials Research Innovations
• Infinite energy

Articles on electricity and magnetism

See Electromagnetic articles

CZ articles

The following is a list of CZ articles of which I am the main (or a major) author. See a separate page for article links related to electromagnetism.

1.  3j-symbol: Symmetrized form of Clebsch-Gordan coefficients. ^[e]
2.  Acceleration due to gravity: The acceleration of a ponderable object, which is near the surface of the Earth, due to the Earth's gravitational force. ^[e]
3.  Acceleration: The increase of an objects velocity (or speed) per unit time. ^[e]
4.  Affine space: Collection of points, none of which is special; an n-dimensional vector belongs to any pair of points. ^[e]
5.  Algebraic geometry: Discipline of mathematics that studies the geometric properties of the objects defined by algebraic equations. ^[e]
6.  Amedeo Avogadro: (August 9, 1776 – July 9, 1856). An Italian physicist who proposed in 1811 Avogadro's law. ^[e]
7.  Amsterdam: The capital city of the Netherlands; 2007 population 743,100. ^[e]
8.  Angular momentum (classical): The tendency of a rotating object to resist changes to its rotational motion. ^[e]
9.  Angular momentum (quantum): A vector operator of which the three components have well-defined commutation relations. ^[e]
10.  Angular momentum coupling: The procedure of constructing eigenvectors of a system's angular momentum out of angular momentum eigenvectors of its subsystems. ^[e]
11.  Antisymmetrizer: operator that projects onto an antisymmetric subspace of a tensor product space of identical linear spaces; ^[e]
12.  Associated Legendre function: Function defined by $P_{\ell }^{(m)}(x)=(1-x^{2})^{m/2}{\tfrac {d^{m}}{dx^{m}}}P_{\ell }(x)$ where P_ℓ denotes a Legendre function. ^[e]
13.  Atomic electron configuration: A specification of the occupation of an atom's electron orbitals by electrons. ^[e]
14.  Atomic mass constant: One twelfth of the mass of a carbon-12 atom in its nuclear and electronic ground state. It is equal to the unified atomic mass unit. ^[e]
15.  Atomic mass: The mass of an atom expressed in unified atomic mass units (u) and formerly known as atomic weight. ^[e]
16.  Atomic orbital: Function in quantum mechanics describing the motion of an electron around the nucleus of an atom. ^[e]
17.  Atom (science): The defining unit of chemical elements. ^[e]
18.  Augustin-Louis Cauchy: (1789 – 1857) prominent French mathematician, one of the pioneers of rigor in mathematics and complex analysis. ^[e]
19.  Avogadro's constant: The number of entities (such as atoms, ions, or molecules) per mole; dimension mol^{−1 [e]}
20.  Battle of the Mookerheyde: A battle (in 1574) during the Dutch war of independence. ^[e]
21.  Born-Oppenheimer approximation: A technique in quantum mechanics in which the kinetic energies of nuclei and electrons are calculated separately. ^[e]
22.  Carbon dioxide: Chemical compound composed of two oxygen atoms covalently bonded to a single carbon atom. ^[e]
23.  Carbon: Fourth most abundant chemical element in the Universe, with atomic number Z=6. ^[e]
24.  Castle Howard: Eighteenth century palace in England. ^[e]
25.  Classification of rigid rotors: A terminological scheme to classify rigid rotors by the relative size of their principal moments of inertia. ^[e]
26.  Clebsch-Gordan coefficients: appear in total angular momentum eigenstates when written in terms of angular momentum states of subsystems. ^[e]
27.  Count Rumford: (1753–1814) An American born soldier, statesman, scientist, inventor and social reformer. ^[e]
28.  Digital object identifier: Unique label for a computer readable object that can be found on the internet, usually used in academic journals. ^[e]
29.  Distribution (mathematics): Objects which generalize functions, used to formulate generalized solutions of partial differential equations. ^[e]
30.  Eckart conditions: Equations describing the conditions under which the vibrations of molecules can be separated from molecular rotations and translations ^[e]
31.  Ecliptic: Great circle that apparent orbit of Sun makes on celestial sphere. ^[e]
32.  Electron configuration: The arrangement of electrons of an atom, a molecule, or other physical structure, distributed in the orbitals of the given system. ^[e]
33.  Electron orbital: Quantum mechanical quadratically integrable one-electron function (function of the coordinates of one electron) ^[e]
34.  Electron shell: A group of electron orbitals that share the same principal quantum number (n). ^[e]
35.  Elements: In one sense, refers to species or types of atoms, each species/type distinguished by the number of protons in the nuclei of the atoms belonging to the species/type, each species/type having a unique number of nuclear protons; in another sense, refers to substances, or pieces of matter, each composed of multiple atoms solely of a single species/type. ^[e]
36.  Energy: A measurable physical quantity of a system which can be expressed in joules (the metric unit for a quantity of energy) or other measurement units such as ergs, calories, watt-hours or Btu. ^[e]
37.  Euclid's Elements: Mathematical and geometric treatise consisting of 13 books written by the Greek mathematician Euclid in Alexandria circa 300 BC. ^[e]
38.  Euclid: (ca. 325 BC - ca. 265 BC) Alexandrian mathematician and known as the father of geometry. ^[e]
39.  Gaussian type orbitals: Functions used as atomic orbitals in the LCAO method for the computation of electron orbitals in molecules. ^[e]
40.  GF method: Method to compute the normal coordinates of a vibrating molecule. ^[e]
41.  Geometric series: A series associated with a geometric sequence, i.e., consecutive terms have a constant ratio. ^[e]
42.  Gravitation: The tendency of objects with mass to accelerate toward each other. ^[e]
43.  Henry of Nassau-Dillenburg: Add brief definition or description
44.  Holland: The western part of the Netherlands bordering the North Sea, divided into the provinces Noord Holland and Zuid Holland. ^[e]
45.  Hund's rules: Rules for predicting the order of atomic energy levels with quantum numbers L, S and J. ^[e]
46.  Hydrogen-like atom: An atom, excluding hydrogen itself, with only one electron, having charge +(Z-1), where Z = atomic number. ^[e]
47.  Hydrogen: The most abundant and lightest chemical element which has atomic number Z = 1 and chemical symbol H. ^[e]
48.  Intermolecular forces: Non-covalent forces between atoms and molecules; often synonymous with Van der Waals forces. ^[e]
49.  Iron: Add brief definition or description
50.  Jacobus Kapteyn: Add brief definition or description
51.  Johannes Diderik van der Waals: Add brief definition or description
52.  Johannes Kepler: Add brief definition or description
53.  Kilogram: Add brief definition or description
54.  Laplace expansion (potential): Add brief definition or description
55.  Legendre polynomials: Add brief definition or description
56.  Lorentz medal: Add brief definition or description
57.  Lucasian chair: Add brief definition or description
58.  Lucille Ball: Add brief definition or description
59.  Mercaptan: Add brief definition or description
60.  Methane: Add brief definition or description
61.  Mikhail Gorbachev: Add brief definition or description
62.  Molar gas constant: Add brief definition or description
63.  Mole (unit): Add brief definition or description
64.  Molecular Hamiltonian: Add brief definition or description
65.  Molecular mass: Add brief definition or description
66.  Molecular orbital theory: Add brief definition or description
67.  Molecular orbital: Add brief definition or description
68.  Moller-Plesset: Add brief definition or description
69.  Mook: Add brief definition or description
70.  Multipole expansion (interaction): Add brief definition or description
71.  Multipole expansion of electric field: Add brief definition or description
72.  National Institute of Standards and Technology: Add brief definition or description
73.  Netherlands: Add brief definition or description
74.  Nicolaus Copernicus: Add brief definition or description
75.  Nitrogen: Add brief definition or description
76.  Oxygen: Add brief definition or description
77.  Parallax: Add brief definition or description
78.  Planck's constant: Add brief definition or description
79.  Polar coordinates: Add brief definition or description
80.  Polarizability: Add brief definition or description
81.  Ptolemy: Add brief definition or description
82.  Rayleigh-Ritz method: Add brief definition or description
83.  Raymond Chandler: Add brief definition or description
84.  Rigid rotor: Add brief definition or description
85.  Rotterdam: Add brief definition or description
86.  Russell-Saunders coupling: Add brief definition or description
87.  Sine: Add brief definition or description (Partially by me)
88.  Sine rule: Add brief definition or description
89.  Slater determinant: Add brief definition or description
90.  Slater orbital: Add brief definition or description
91.  SNOBOL: Add brief definition or description
92.  Solid harmonics: Add brief definition or description
93.  Spherical harmonics: Add brief definition or description
94.  Spherical polar coordinates: Add brief definition or description
95.  Stark effect: Add brief definition or description
96.  Term symbol: Add brief definition or description
97.  The Hague: Add brief definition or description
98.  Unified atomic mass unit: Add brief definition or description
99.  Utrecht: Add brief definition or description
100.  Van der Waals equation: Add brief definition or description
101.  Van der Waals forces: Add brief definition or description
102.  Van der Waals molecule: Add brief definition or description
103.  Van der Waals radius: Add brief definition or description
104. Vector: Add brief definition or description (Partially)
105.  Vector coupling: Add brief definition or description
106.  Wigner D-matrix: Add brief definition or description
107. Zsigmondy: Add brief definition or description

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