The Analytical, Physical and Theoretical Chemistry specialization (CAPT) gives students the theoretical and practical expertise required for interpreting and implementing a large number of phenomena which involve the atomic and molecular reality of the material world. Its inclusion in the chemistry major is entirely appropriate, as it benefits from interaction with other fields in the major, such as molecular and materials chemistry and chemical engineering. However, the specialization is also open to the connected fields of materials science. Though it shares subjects with physics and biology, it treats them in a particular way, proving its uniqueness when it comes to modeling (theoretical chemistry), studying (physical chemistry) and characterising (analytical chemistry).

Opportunities
The behaviour of the atomic and molecular world is varied. This diversity forces chemists to use many different theoretical and experimental approaches. With many supporting laboratories, the CAPT specialization is able to provide a broad overview of all these approaches. The theoretical chemistry papers show that there are many pertinent levels of modeling for atomic and molecular matter and that to account for and predict physical and chemical properties, it is necessary to make an appropriate choice between them. The physical chemistry papers illustrate the ingenious variety of strategies employed by experimenting chemists to discover the secrets of electrons, photons and chemical reactions, which allow us to learn from the behaviour of matter on various scales of time and space. The analytical chemistry papers complete this degree, giving the trained chemist a significant arsenal of theoretical and experimental tools for identifying the composition and organization of chemical matter. This active context can also be found in the Energy, Formulation and Soft Matter inter-specialization programs with use much of the theoretical and experimental content of the CAPT specialization.

The objectives of students taking the CAPT specialization papers are varied. The course has consequently been designed to (i) enable graduates either to enter the workforce directly or to continue studying for a doctorate; (ii) take into account the inherent duality of this field, as the needs of future concept, instrument and method developers are very different from the needs of those who will use these tools. To take into account this diversity, the course coordinators have designed (i) a specific paper for developing students´ career plans; (ii) two general papers which require only the prerequisites common to all Master of Chemistry students. The CAPT specialization also pays particular attention to class format. This specialization has to manage a significant heterogeneity due to the intrinsic plurality of the CAPT field, the great variety of students´ educational goals, and their diverse backgrounds which create a disparity in the mastery of certain concepts and tools, for example in mathematics.