My Quantum Prof.

Quiz time brought me the memories of my first semester which in turn brought the memories of quantum chemistry.

After being continually wet for about two years in the academic tempest, I basked in the sunshine for about 3 months. Then while spending one more month of glorified sunlight of iitm, few hailstones began to drop on my head. The first and one of the biggest of them was quantum chemistry.

Sometimes you learn more from a person’s appearance than what he can teach you in a time span of 4 months (a typical semester).Quantum chemistry was taught to us by a very learned looking professor .My quantum professor is one who would fit in the above description. His entire appearance, way of talking was a demonstration of what quantum chemistry stood for. Quantum chemistry is counter intuitive and difficult to digest most of the times. And one look at this person would remove any doubts still pestering you. If you had trouble accepting quantisation, one look at his head shining with few quanta of grey strings of protein (called hair) would keep your doubts at bay. His way of speaking in discrete words (or sometimes in discrete letters) is just to emphasise the above fact.

He along with some students in the class practically demonstrated Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle in the class. Some students were talking when he was teaching and he tried to determine the position of source of the sound .But the movement he decided on some position, the source of the sound would have changed its position showing that he got its velocity wrong.This had a lasting impact on the elite few who were awake.

This and many other incidents proved the commitment which the man had for the subject.I some how managed to do decently in quantum chemistry in the exams and thus ended a glorious chapter in my life called quantum chemistry.

I leave it to the readers’ discretion which parts of this post are true and which of it are
science fiction :-D

P.S: "Sometimes it seems to me that a bond between two atoms has become so real, so tangible, so friendly, that I can almost see it. Then I awake with a little shock, for a chemical bond is not a real thing. It does not exist. No one has ever seen one. No one ever will. It is a figment of our own imagination". Charles A. Coulson

I also assert that my quantum prof is also a figment of my imagination.