Lecture Notes

Here, you can find vestiges of Jeehyun's effort to make the complex truths of nature easier to understand—for himself and others.

Mass-Dependent Fractionation - From Urey to Biegeleisen

My first two years at MIT were about deciphering quadruple sulfur isotope patterns recorded inside the sedimentary rocks to understand the early Earth atmosphere. This material will be a good starting point for those who want to learn about the basics of mass-dependent fractionation.

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The Rayleigh Equation - The Rayleigh-type isotope fractionation

The Rayleigh equation describes the partitioning of isotopes between two reservoirs. This covers the principle and the derivation of the Rayleigh equation.

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The Maxwell-Boltzmann Distribution - The kinetic theory of gases

The Maxwell-Boltzmann distribution shows how the energy of gas molecules varies and can describe molecule speeds assuming idealized gases within a thermodynamically equilibrated system. This material covers the principle and the derive of the Maxwell-Boltzmann distribution.

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Unimolecular Reaction Dynamics - From Lindemann-Hinshelwood theory to RRKM theory

Although unimolecular reaction seems to be the simplest reaction, it is indeed very complicated and difficult to make a good agreement between theoretical explanations and experimental data. This material covers the development of those theories that describe unimolecular reactions from Lindemann-Hinshelwood's theory to RRKM theory. I mainly followed the stream and adopted lots of materials from Chemical Kinetics and Dynamics 2nd edition written by Jeffrey I. Steinfeld, Joseph S. Francisco, and William L. Hase. So if you want to study deeper, I recommend you revisit this textbook.

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