How do chemistry and physics relate

What are the major differences between physics and chemistry? I know that they both study atoms, electrons and molecules, but what makes some topics part of one and some part of another? Physics studies many other things than just atoms, electrons, and molecules. Or to say the least, it studies other aspects of matter than just their composition from atoms or molecules when it studies heat, it's about the energy carried by atoms but it is interested in completely different properties than just the arrangement of atoms inside molecules.

Chemistry studies very specific things: the phenomena in which atoms in molecules reorganize into different molecules reactions and the structure of these molecules as an organized collection of atoms.

It studies it because it wants to convert materials, liquids, or solutions to others, usually because these materials or compounds have some applications. It is a modern scientific version of alchemy that began with this research in not-quite-scientific framework. While chemistry is very advanced today, it doesn't use mathematics too much. Physics is about the research of all aspects of Nature that are sufficiently "simple" or "fundamental" so that we may describe their behavior by accurate enough mathematics and the laws that govern this observable behavior may be translated to very accurate mathematical equations, too.

It's a different motivation, different strategy, and different methodology. When systems become too complex or "composite", such as some particular complicated molecules, we usually don't expect physics to study these things that fail to be fundamental although they may have very important applications in industry or chemistry.

In the case of atoms, physics still studies the objects using the traditional physical concepts such as position, velocity, acceleration, forces, energies — applied to electrons, atoms, and molecules. It actually wants to translate all these things to real numbers. We find out that to do so, classical mechanics must be replaced by quantum mechanics and deal with things like "wave functions" instead of positions but it still deals with real or complex functions of real or complex variables which include time.

Chemistry is much more practically oriented discipline that mostly studies the qualitative differences between compounds and how they change in the reactions. Of course, there is a boundary between physics and chemistry. It is probably not easy to divide the subdisciplines that exist near the boundary but they include physical chemistry, quantum chemistry, chemical physics, and so on.

These terms are actually different from each other and the practitioners may talk at length when they're working on physical chemistry and chemical physics but at the end, it's usually the same researchers, anyway.

When it's physics, it's about the mathematical laws of Nature which matter. When it's chemistry, it's about the compounds and reactions. Just to give you a simple analogy, physics is like "constitution" of a nation. Chemistry is a set of "laws", governing one particular types of affairs of the nation.

Any law of chemistry must be "constitutionally valid". Please don't bring amendments here, though Physics is the "foundation". In rough terms at the very fundamental level, it mostly deals with energy, mass, and electric charge.

As mentioned by "Lubos", it studies both things at atomic scale, and things at galactic scale. Its ultimate aim, though not everyone would agree with that is to find an equation that would explain everything. How do physics and chemistry relate? Physics Introduction to Physics What is Physics? Nam D. Jul 8, Well, they are both science subjects Explanation: And both are needed to understand the world and universe better, along with biology and mathematics.

Those are some examples in which I think that chemistry is related to physics. Related questions How can physics help us understand what are the basic building blocks of matter? Really, if it is not hydrogen, you can't do much without some tricks. So the chemistry way allows use to make up some non-fundamental stuff and use it in a useful way. One day, there will be no difference between chemistry and physics.

As computers become more powerful but before they take over the world , maybe we will be able to model larger things with fundamental principles. But for now, that is not going to happen. The world needs chemists. Here are some things I don't like: Photo electron. What is a photo electron? According to chemists, it is an electron released by interaction with light.

We are in the department of chemistry AND physics, so many of the seminars I go to are chemistry oriented. Whenever they mention photoelectron, I lean over to a physicist and say "what's that?

Ok, physicist use this also. The problem in my book is that chemical potential is just kind of a potential. Well, it's not directly due to a fundamental force. Van der Waals force. Again, not a fundamental force.

Really, this is an electrostatic force.