Teaching
I have taught many courses in chemistry, physics, and mathematics to undergraduate and graduate students over the years. For some of these courses I have made full lecture handouts/problem sets, whereas for others I just have PDFs explaining tricky concepts (or things that my students found challenging).
Some of them are older than others and probably could use a refresh. They are almost certainly not error-free - let me know of any you find.
Full Handouts/Courses
Spectroscopy Lecture Course
This lecture course was written as an introduction to the physical side of spectroscopy, for chemistry students. It does not go as deeply into mathematics as many courses do, but focusses more on intuitive understanding and learning how to think about the interaction of light with matter. An attempt was made to move slightly away from the "death by gas phase IR spectroscopy" that tends to be the bedrock of chemistry spectroscopy courses.
QM of Molecular Structure and Bonding Lecture Course
These notes form a short course on the quantum mechanics behind molecular structure and chemical bonding. I've tried to get away from too much abstract QM, because chemistry students who are already sceptical about learning stuff that looks like physics really don't really see the point of it (and often don't have the necessary mathematical background anyway). Hence there is more of a focus on how it applies to chemistry and chemical bonding.
Calculus for Chemists Lecture Course
A course on basic calculus designed for chemistry (or other natural science students). Assumes no familiarity with calculus (so no need for an A level maths prerequisite). There is also a set of slides which I had to make due to being put in a lecture room without a whiteboard for one year of this course. Version 0.9 of a workbook in the style of Alan Vincent's classic group theory book is here too, but is not yet complete.
Introduction To Chemistry Lecture Course
A course on introductory university chemistry (specifically, the non-organic bits). Aims to be a whistlestop tour for the freshly-matriculated undergraduate chemist of the relevant bits of atomic and molecular structure, quantum mechanics, spectroscopy, and a few other bits and pieces. Every year I update this course, and every year I still think it's terrible, so I keep on changing it. Eventually I will be happy with it.
Solutions and Colloids Handout
A minimal handout for a course on solution chemistry and colloids, which I had to hurriedly deliver at extremely short notice to students in our partner campus in China. These notes are my distilled version of a much more complete (and excellent) course written by a colleague (Shengfu Yang). No figures are in these notes, due to time constraints - these were primarily designed as an aid to me while doing the lectures on the blackboard, but might still be useful to some.
Basic Quantum Mechanics for Chemistry Lecture Course
This is a set of slides for a course designed for chemistry undergraduates meeting quantum mechanics for the (almost) the first time, with a focus on being able to understand atomic and molecular structure later on. Time constraints for delivery of this course meant I didn't have time to make a full monographic handout, so there is just slides. It is kept quite qualitative, so there is minimal maths. There is also an associated problem set with solutions.
Ultrafast Optics: For Non-Specialists
This handout grew whilst I was preparing to give a short talk to my research group about ultrafast optics and lasers. Many people enter ultrafast or nonlinear spectroscopy from a variety of backgrounds, especially from the life sciences. Most books on this topic are undoubtedly rigorous and thorough, but also entirely inaccessible for somebody without a physics degree. This handout aims to bridge that gap, and forms the basis of my book published through IOPebooks .
Introductory Quantum Mechanics Lecture Course
This is the handout for a six lecture course designed for chemistry undergraduates meeting quantum mechanics for the first time. There is minimal assumed knowledge and it ends up providing a basic understanding of rotational and vibrational quantisation of simple molecules. It is kept quite qualitative, so there is minimal maths. There is also an associated problem set with solutions. I wrote this many years ago, and the level is a bit higher than we expect for our introductory courses in Leicester these days.
Simulating a Velocity-Map Imaging Spectrometer
This rather rambling and questionably complete document was the culmination of one of the worst1 things I've ever been asked to do in my life. I was mostly trying to find a good geometry for a velocity-map imaging spectrometer, but then ended up in a SIMION rabbit hole and it was all a fairly dark and depressing experience. Hopefully this document a) explains a bit about how VMI works; b) demonstrates that the geometry that Eppink and Parker made in the 80s is still basically fine for 99% of users; and c) helps people use SIMION and Lua without wanting to rend down their computer in a vat of acid after every work day.
Short Explanatory Notes
Electromagnetic Waves
This note explains some concepts related to electromagnetic waves (namely, what a wavevector is, and what 'phase' means), and gives a general introduction to the physics. Students who aren't from a physics background find this challenging in my experience (I definitely did). It forms part of the appendix to the ultrafast optics book.
Statistical Mechanics: The Background
This note walks through the background of statistical mechanics and tackles a simple problem of calculating the internal energy of a box of atoms starting just from quantum mechanical expressions for energy levels. Most confusion around statstical mechanics seems to arise from people not understanding the point of it, or understanding why we care about partition functions so much. Hopefully this goes some way to remedying the situation, and can convince you that it's really astoundingly beautiful.
Nuclear Spin Statistics
The influence of nuclear spin statistics on rotational spectra often seems confusing, and it can seem that there are a lot of formulae pulled out of nowhere to help explain what we see. This short note aims to explain the influence of nuclear spin statistics by considering the effect of a rotation on the total wavefunction of a diatomic molecule. It assumes you're reasonably adept with typical undergraduate chemist level quantum mechanics.
Combination Differences
This note walks through the process of taking combination differences of lines in a rovibrational spectrum (a high resolution IR spectrum so that rotational lines are resolved as well as vibrational lines). By doing this you can find rotational constants for the different vibrational levels, and extrapolate back to an "equilibrium" rotational constant (if such a thing is meaningful - I didn't set the exam question).
Matrix Multiplication
In my experience people tend to be fine with matrix multiplication when it's done on a matrix drawn out in full (so you can just go column by row etc..), but then fall apart when you write the matrix multiplication using summation notation (which is obviously a lot more powerful if you want to multiply a big matrix). This note explains how you do this, and what steps are legal/illegal when using the sum notation.
Solutions and Colloids MEGA TUTORIAL
Staffing pressures in 2026 at the University of Leicester led to us having to condense tutorial groups and run a couple of large tutorials. To make this seem slightly less like a significant short-changing of the students paying exorbitant fees, I badged it as a MEGA TUTORIAL and prepared a hasty handout
Quantum Mechanics MEGA TUTORIAL
Success of the previous MEGA TUTORIAL meant we did it again for quantum mechanics, and this time I made a more neat typed handout . Arguably, this was an own goal that simply demonstrated to the university management that we don't have to do small-group teaching, but there we are.
Ultrafast Photochemistry
I made this beautifully handwritten document as a supplement to the slides of an photochemistry course I was teaching. I felt like some of the detail about ultrafast photochemistry was a bit missing, so made this as a supplement.
Degeneracy in Molecular Term Symbols
This whiteboard was made after a lockdown online tutorial in which one of my excellent students at Merton college pointed out that I'd been teaching this incorrectly for a whole year. It aims to explain why the degeneracy of a molecular term is not the standard 2J+1 (as in atoms), but is actually 2S+1. It boils down to how the angular momentum vectors are projected, and in molecules you project to the molecule-fixed axis not the space-fixed axis.
Chemical Kinetics Revision Sheets
I made a selection of these handwritten (and questionably legible) revision sheets covering basic topics in undergraduate chemical kinetics: approximations in kinetics (steady-state approximation and pre-equilibria); basic rates and stoichiometry ; simple collision theory ; Lindemann theory (and a sequel ); some details on the maths behind transition state theory (and a sequel).
Slater Determinants
A couple of students once came to me in a last minute exam panic about not understanding the point of a Slater determinant . I made this in a rush so it doesn't really explain why Slater determinants work, but does show that they do work for a simple system. Maybe useful if you are very new to the idea.
Population vs Sample Statistics
Often it isn't clear to students why we have two formulae for standard deviation - the population and sample versions. This note explains it a bit further, using an example stolen from Michael Burt. The data that was used in the example is here (.txt file) if you want to check my arithmetic.