Three Dollar Quill

Here's where things stand:

• I've resolved my confusion about sigma orbitals, and they now make much more sense to me.
• I've figured out how to make sense of pi orbitals in the context of the weird things bonds can do in four dimensions.
• This should be enough information to analyze the valence shells of various arrangements of pure elements.
• The trends related to electronegativity aren't too confusing, though I haven't run through the previous steps in enough detail for it to be worth it.
• I think I understand the basic magnetic implications of the different kinds of partially-filled orbitals.

Here's where I think I need to go next:

• Write out the molecular orbitals for the first and second rows.
• Characterize the pure elements of the first row.
• Characterize the pure elements of the second row.
• Sketch out electronegativity; figure out what molecular orbitals "intermediate between" the above orbitals look like.
• Do a basic sketch of the properties of the first row of transition metals.
• Get some basic idea of what kinds of ions and crystals can develop.
• See if I can figure out what's going on inside the nucleons, because if I'm understanding the very basics of QCD correctly, naively scaling it up to four spatial dimensions would cause... problems. Problems which I have already presumed do not occur. (Like, anti-muons kind of seem like a safer bet than protons, but maybe there's something really obvious that saves protons or breaks anti-muons.)

Somewhere in there, I'll hopefully get some sense of the equivalents of organic and biochemistry.

Anyway, I'm tired and spacing out, so that's enough for tonight.

Good night.