A General Method for Displaying Angular Dependence of Central Potential Wave Functions A surprisingly uncomplicated program has been written for plotting any of the spherical harmonies. The algolrithm is simple enough for most undergraduates to follow and as such could serve as a. valuable teaching aid or furnish the basis for a eompuber lab project. The treatment is general: given 1 and mz quantum numbers, our program plots the corresponding contour of the angular part of the general central potential problem. The program evaluates the associated Legendre polynominsl of degree 1 and order Irnll. By letting B vary from 0 to 2~ we generate contours by plotting Bllmi*(B).Bilrn~(B) v e r s u 8 in a polar coordinate system. The resulting diagram represents the total directional dependence of J.'J. if the plot is rotated about Z through the r range of 6 (see figure). The program is executed as a. onestep job with coordinates being passed directly to a subroutine which calls standard ealeamp graphing routines. I t is written in FORTRAN IV, level G and was tested on an IBM/360 Model 75 with Caleomp plotter. The required storage, however, is less than 8K, thus the program may he run on very small computers. The listing and detailed presentation of the algolritbmis available upon request. WILLIAMD. SNIDER DEP.~RTMENT OF MATHEMAT~CS UNIVERSITY OF NORTH CAROLINA CHAPELHILL,27514
774
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Journal of Chemical
Education
HENRY BRANDIS,111
