Re: S/W: Periodic Table Browser

[Doug Loss <dloss@csrlink.net>]

Kyle Burton wrote:
> 
> How would you store the data?  It's not a flat type of heirarchy...it's
> not even like a grid.  I'm no chemist, but if you have 3Xs 4Ys and 3Zs,
> isn't it possible that you might have 2, or more different compounds
> that contain the same number/type of elements, but just with a different
> structure?  Therefore different compunds?  I am not just referring to
> the right/left handed types of molecules, but am imagining wholly different
> chemicals.
> 
As to data storage, take a look at what our Bruno Vernier has done with
EDUML; we could probably figure out something from that.  I'm no chemist
either, but I'm pretty sure that there are protocols for distinguishing
between different chemicals with the same component atoms.  The input
method for the program would have to allow similar methods of specifying
which chemical you were interested in.

And yes, it would be a gargantuan amount of data.  Perhaps it could be
made modular, so that different sets of chemical compounds could be
"plugged in" as they were entered into the proper data format.  It's
certainly worth thinking about, although it may not be worth doing. 
Let's consider it further.

-- 
Doug Loss                 A life spent making mistakes is not only
Data Network Coordinator  more honorable, but more useful than a
Bloomsburg University     life spent doing nothing.
dloss@bloomu.edu                G. B. Shaw