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Equation 1 · Part 9 · What Evolution Actually Found in the Quantum Toolbox

fraction

T(E)≈exp⁡(−2ℏ∫x1x22m[V(x)−E] dx)T(E) \approx \exp\left(-\frac{2}{\hbar}\int_{x_1}^{x_2}\sqrt{2m\left[V(x)-E\right]}\,dx\right)
fraction

What this part means

Divide the expression above the line by the one below it.

Its job in the formula

The expression above the fraction bar is divided by the complete expression below it. The denominator must not be zero.

The passage around this formula

The best-established non-trivial quantum effect in biology generates none of the excitement the other three cases have attracted, largely because it never needed a correction: enzymatic hydrogen transfer has been recognized as a quantum-tunneling phenomenon, not a classical over-the-barrier reaction, since kinetic isotope effect measurements in the 1980s and 1990s began returning numbers no classical transition-state theory could accommodate. A classical reaction’s kinetic isotope effect — the rate ratio between a protium-substituted and a deuterium-substituted substrate — is bounded by the difference in zero-point vibrational energy between the two isotopes, which caps the semiclassical…

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Learn the underlying idea

A fraction a/b means a divided by b. The top number is the numerator; the bottom number is the denominator, and it cannot be zero.

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Sources cited in the surrounding passage

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