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View submission: Ask Anything Wednesday - Physics, Astronomy, Earth and Planetary Science
Chemist. I do form pictures in my head and I can best describe it like opening tabs in a web browser that show images from a textbook.
I may start with the ping pong balls in my head, or something like a Lego brand building block structure. I have a pretty good idea based on what I do, electron microscopy or neutron scanning what atoms/molecules are doing. In my head, I can do some simple quick thought 3D models to narrow down my ideas before starting experiments.
I then move onto a new tab with electron clouds, which do look a bit weird once you get into higher level classes. Goes from ping pong balls to shaped clouds of potential energy. Let's me do some quick probabilities such as I think this has 5% chance of working because that other shape is much more preferable/easier.
Once I start moving to fine electron structure it's stack horizontal lines separated by distances. I can probably get singlet/triplet crossing images like you see in a textbook.
Phonons I'm still visualising as balls on a string or a really simple waveform diagram.
Anything with waves and I'm moving my hands around like I'm conducting an orchestra. Same with aligning magnetic fields for anything pulsed where I'll be okay this goes down 90° (move arm from vertical to horizontal), then the signal randomly degenerates (start spreading out fingers while moving arm around horizontally), then this part of the signal coalesces (move outer two fingers together), etc.
There's nothing here!