When one is faced with a condensed-phase system, usually containing many molecules, that is at or near thermal equilibrium, it is not necessary or even wise to try to describe it in terms of quantum wave functions or even classical trajectories of all of the constituent molecules. Instead, the powerful tools of statistical mechanics
Electrons are the “glue” that holds the nuclei together in the chemical bonds of molecules and ions. Of course, it is the nuclei’s positive charges that bind the electrons to the nuclei. The competitions among Coulomb repulsions and attractions as well as the existence of non-zero electronic and nuclear kinetic energies make the treatment of the full electronic-nuclear Schrödinger equation an extremely difficult problem. Electronic