Discussion

• Comment Link Friday, 20 January 2012 15:11 posted by Marcelo Miranda

  There are two major alternatives: you can use some kind of spectroscopy to *measure* the energies, or else you can use a computer to *calculate* them.
  
  There are many types of spectroscopy that could be useful. Different techniques could be used to measure how much energy a molecule picks up by, say, rotating faster, by vibrating more and more, or by rearranging its electrons.
  
  For calculation of the energies a molecule can have you need a computer equipped with the necessary software. The calculations you'd need are not particularly difficult, but are way too long and repetitive to be done by hand.
  For small molecules, there's no need for a particularly powerful computer. The software isn't hard to find either. There are many people and several companies that can provide it, in some cases for free, in others for a considerable amount of money.
  
  If you'd like to read a bit more about it, you can try the physical chemistry parts of general chemistry textbooks. And there's plenty about it on the web too.
• Comment Link Wednesday, 18 January 2012 19:01 posted by Student

  How do you work out the energy levels of the products and reagents?