Despite neat formulas and equations in textbooks, chemistry is still an inexact science. At best, scientists only partly understand some of the turbulent processes that occur during chemical reactions; often they cannot accurately predict the end results. Now a California scientist has devised a method for making chemistry more exact: he mixes chemicals in a computer instead of a test tube.
Enrico Clementi, a theoretical chemist at IBM's San Jose research laboratory, was familiar with the mathematical descriptions of the actions of the electrons, nuclei, atoms and molecules that participate in a chemical reaction. He was certain that a solution...
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