Laser Chemistry Not a Snap – but Possible
...g engineering design principles. He is persuading people that the process is in no way impossible. People still have their doubts. Molecules absorb specific frequencies of light as a result of the chemical bonds between different atoms. The atoms contain, with the light frequencies that it absorbed, excited electrons from specific parts of the electromagnetic spectrum. What the chemists were previously trying to do was use the idea of making the laser hit one specific chemical bond with one frequency of light. This causes the chemical bond to become excited until it broke, however other bonds were affected and caused this not to work. Rabitz wants to try the “optimal design theory” to craft a laser pulse to do the job. He believes that by zapping the bond quickly, feeding the data into the computer about the molecule’s reaction, and letting the computer decide how to change the pulse, it will better the job and make it work more effectively. It can do this by changing the wavelenghth, polarity, or the length of the pulse. The article summarized above relates to our chemistry class in many ways. First, this article relates to chemistry by demonstrating how manipulating molecules can cause different chemi...