“Mathematics”, an essential tool of Science
Mathematics is an extremely important tool in all branches of science. Anyone interested in pursuing a science-career will not get very far without a solid understanding of mathematics. However, it is important to understand that mathematics is not a natural science. One important reason is that mathematical validity does not depend on experiment, whereas in science, the sole judge of validity is experiment. That doesn’t make mathematics bad. Mathematics is an extremely useful tool in science as well as we can say a language which can be applied in various field of science.
Albert Einstein said, “Don’t worry about your difficulties in mathematics; I assure you that mine are greater.” Mathematics is the tool specially suited for dealing with abstract concepts of any kind and there is no limit to its power. .If you ask mathematicians what they do, you always get the same answer. They think about difficult and unusual problems. They do not think about ordinary problems: they just write down the answers.
Today, mathematics is used throughout the world as an essential tool in many fields, including natural science, engineering, medicine, and the social sciences. Applied mathematics, the branch of mathematics concerned with application of mathematical knowledge to other fields, inspires and makes use of new mathematical discoveries and sometimes leads to the development of entirely new disciplines. Seismology is one of the courses where applied mathematics is directly linked.
In chemistry mathematics is an essential part to evaluate any equation. Its Mathematics is the study of quantity, structure, space, and change. Mathematicians seek out patterns. They formulate new conjectures and establish truth by rigorous deduction from appropriately chosen axioms and definitions. No doubt, Chemistry is an exact science since it relies on quantitative models that can be described and applied by using the mathematical language. For instance, the theory of chemical bonding and molecular structure, rates and equilibria of chemical reactions, molecular thermodynamics, relationships involving energy, structure and reactivity, modeling of solvation, are swarming with problems whose solutions require sophisticated mathematical techniques. Mathematics also plays a central role in many areas of “applied” chemistry and chemical engineering. Important examples include atmospheric chemistry, biochemistry, and the broad field of computer simulations. The development of faster and more accurate spectroscopic techniques, the design of molecular devices, bio-molecular computers, and of new empirical methods to predict reliable chemical data, and the conception of more efficient chemical reactors are just a few of a vast number of other topics that have strong links to applied mathematics.
A closer interaction between chemists and mathematicians may therefore lead to significant progress in many key problems in chemistry and hence science.
Author: Chandan Das
M. Tech in Energy Tech. 2nd Semester,
Tezpur University.