Professor Harold L. Friedman is supported by a grant from the Theoretical and Computational Chemistry Program to perform theoretical studies in the area of statistical mechanics of ionic solutions. This research is of primary importance in furthering our understanding of the nature of chemical equilibrium and chemical reactions in solution. Professor Friedman will employ a mixture of analytical statistical mechanical theory and computer simulation to relate measurable properties of solutions to a molecular picture of the underlying structure and dynamics. The measurable properties of primary importance are the electrical conductivity, concentration dependent equilibria and reaction rates, especially for charge transfer reactions. New probes range from neutron diffraction, which is uniquely powerful for establishing the molecular structure of solutions, to spectroscopic methods that have, with the advent of ultra-short pulses for both generating and probing fast molecular responses, become enormously powerful.
