Talk:MRD:zw4415

Feedback

Good work! Your structure and argumentation is clear and I could follow your train of thought throughout. I especially liked the formatting of multiple graphs into tables. Most of the questions were answered correctly. Unfortunately it seems like you forgot to answer two of them (experimental verification of results and Polanyi's rules). Here a couple of pointers to further improve (in order of most to least important):

• Answers to questions:
  • Saddle points/minima: In fact both are characterised by the first derivatives being equal to zero. You can only distinguish between the two using second derivatives. Can you come up with a solution if I tell you that a saddle point is a maximum in one direction and a minimum in the other?
  • TS energies: Did you realise that the potential surface energy plots are only excerpts of the full surface? r₁ & r₂ go on until infinity. The potential energy of the reagents is in fact the potential energy at infinite separation, when the variation with internuclear distance is practically zero.
  • HHF trajectories: In order to really understand why certain initial conditions produce effective trajectories you need to invoke Polanyi's rules. In the early barrier HF reaction, is vibrational or translational energy promoting a reaction?
• References:
  • Please include a reference section with every piece of academic work. While I know it is possible to do this lab without consulting any literature, you should nonetheless read around the subject and acknowledge that you have used information prepared by others (such as the information contained in the lab script, which itself draws from citations).
• Introduction:
  • When writing an introduction, ask yourself: "If I had not read the lab script, would I know what this report is about?" Your introduction should contain everything to bring a reader up to speed. For example, you could have spoken about potential energy surfaces, the properties of transition states or the fact that you investigated only collinear arrangements of atoms in this work, but that it is only a base-level simplification of reaction dynamics.
• Conclusion:
  • Your conclusion is a checklist for the reader. If the reader had not understood anything of your report, they should still be able to read the key points in your conclusion. Write about things such as your key findings (from the entire experiment, not just the last section), unforeseen results and comparisons of your findings to literature.
• Grammar/formatting:
  • Your English is very good, but there were still a few minor grammar mistakes. The two that stand out to me were incorrect usage of singular/plural verb forms and third person singular verb forms. Examples: "Trajectories of reactions together with the intermolecular momentum vs. time graphs was were used [...]".
  • This is very insignificant, but could helpful if you decide to use a lot of maths in your work. Everything contained in formulae, such as variables names or subscripts should be in italics. Example: "p₂ was negative, indicating [...]"--Bg1512 (talk) 15:45, 11 May 2017 (BST)