chemistry
In the night sky : Orion Completed
I have finally, after months of going back and forth to this, partly due to other study and things to do. Completed the 24 hour OU / OpenLearn Course. I was just doing this casually anyway.
Note: This is a Level 1 Open University course.
After studying this course, you should be able to:
* Understand facts, concepts, principles, theories, classifications and language used in astronomy * Understand the range of sizes, distances and motions of objects in the night sky * Understand the structure, evolution and the main processes operating in stars * Understand the properties of planets in our Solar System and exoplanetary systems * Understand the history of the universe.
Really interesting course, lots to think about and learn just from doing some of the research for the questions posed during the course.
Astronomy uses the greek alphabet for star names for example so this post may help.
#course #openlearn #openuniversity #science #space #astronomy #cosmology #physics #astrophysics #chemistry #biology #OU #greek
LaTeX and Chemistry
LaTeX is very useful for typesetting Chemistry.
A few examples are below
Normally we would the chemical formula for Methane as
$CH_4$
How do we achieve this in LaTeX? We to use maths mode.
$CH_4$
So the underscore gives us the required Subscript 4. The $ tells latex to use maths mode.
If we want to include both the Atomic number and Mass of an element. For example Hydrogen.
$H^1_1$
$H^6_12$
Or Carbon (illustrating how to type 2 numbers)
$C^6_{12}$
$C^6_{12}$
Puts one number above the other. So in the case the ^ gives us our superscript.
If we wanted to write Sodium as an ion we would put
$Na^{1+}$ Note that the 1+ has been put inside curly braces {1+}
$Na^{1+}$
So far this is pretty straightforward
You can also type chemical equations, which is a little more involved:
$H_2O(l) \hspace{0.5cm} \xrightarrow[\text{}]{\text{heat}}\hspace{0.5cm} = \hspace{0.5cm} H_2O (g)$
The first \text{} would put any text under the arrow, while clearly the second puts the text on top.
As per instructions you need to tell LaTeX to use the package mathtools
\usepackage{mathtools}
I have also added some horizontal spacing so the equation is not squashed together.
however writefreely does not seem to render this fully. You can view this equation in Overleaf here
#LaTeX, #Learn, #typesetting, #chemistry, #basics
Hg and Au Recovery from Tailings
Recovering Hg and Au, with a Shaker Table from Tailings, Sudan, Africa
One of the really nice things about IRC, is the number of interesting channels and discussions, with numerous knowledgeable people. There was a link and discussion in ##chemistry on Freenode the other day, which showed the extraction of Mercury (Hg) and Gold (Au) from mining waste material, Tailings.
Interesting process and idea, especially, if this can be demonstrated to be commercially viable.
Granted anyone watching this video, who has a knowledge of Health and Safety issues around Hg, may want to look away.
Interesting reaction between Mercury (Hg) andNitric Acid ($HNO_3$).
Script for $\LaTeX$ Tables
I was asked in irc ( ##chemistry on frenode) about a project to create a table for periodic table data in $\LaTeX$.
This post, is meant to be a rough guide. You are expected to do your own research in to any specific features you need.
As there are now about 120 elements, doing this manually could be rather long winded. So I am trying to develop a small shell script to help with this process.
Firstly Looking at loops in Bash
now how to generate a basic table in $\LaTeX$
\begin{table}[]
\begin{tabular}{llllll}
& & & & &
\end{tabular}
\caption{}
\label{tab:my-table}
\end{table}
This is for a 1 row table, to add multiple rows, you need to add \ at the end of the row as in:-
\begin{table}[]
\begin{tabular}{llllll}
& & & & & \\
& & & & & \\
& & & & &
\end{tabular}
\caption{}
\label{tab:my-table}
\end{table}
The following shell script should help us with this.
Please note that the \, should be removed from the very last row.
I have added a script for 10 rows. This can be changed via the shell script.
1 #!/bin/bash
2
3 echo " " > data.txt
4 echo "\begin{table}[]" > data.txt
5 echo "\begin{tabular}{llllll}" >> data.txt
6 #wc -l data.txt
7
8 for i in {1..10..1}
9 do
10
11 #echo "hello"
12 echo "& & & & & \\" >> data.txt
13 done
14 #wc -l data.txt
15 echo "\end{tabular}" >> data.txt
16 echo "\caption{}" >> data.txt
17 echo "\label{tab:my-table}" >> data.txt
18 echo "\end{table}" >> data.txt
Required table headings were : atom ; r atomic ; density ; Tf ; Tg ;... ?
Table headings are obviously at the top, therefore, once you have run the script and generated the right number of rows amending the first row to
& atom & r atomic & density & Tf & Tg \
Should give the required headings
I have added some word count (wc) to help with diagnostics.
You will need to change the output file extension to .tex for a $\LaTeX$ file. I'll leave it as data.txt as you need to add the other components of a $\LaTeX$ document anyway.
If the table spans more than 1 page then the table should use
\begin{longtable}{llllll}
\end{longtable}
#chemistry, #typesetting, #bash, #LaTeX, #tables, #scripting
Chemistry Help
I came across this website on the Fediverse as part of a thread on science. I had a look and it appears to be something could really help anyone studying Chemistry
A discussion that mentioned Atomic Orbitals led me to this page on the above website. This site has some nice simulations of topics that are included in the A'level Chemistry Syllabus.
There is also a website with a nice forum on science that I found too. This has a section on Chemistry and then sub forums for Organic, Inorganic and Physical chemistry.
$\LaTeX$ may also be of interest to Chemistry students as you can type set Chemical Formulae etc.
In a sort of related topic, I found a useful site that gives tips on technical writing, I am familiar with some of the ideas presented here, well mostly Constructivism by Jerome Bruner from studying the Supporting Learning in Primary Schools course with the Open University.
I am trying to follow some of this idea when writing instructional blog posts. Provide information on how I do things but put quite a lot of emphasis on the reader actually going away and researching topics. Everyone's system and circumstances are different.
#science, #chemistry, #study, #alevel, #help, #support, #websites, #forum, #simulation.
You can find me on Friendica at [email protected]
Bonds between atoms
Further to my post on the history of atomic sturcture
It was pointed out to me that “Compounds do not form by combination of atoms, but by formation of chemical bonds between atoms.”
To this end, I am posting the link below to explain the different types of chemical bonds.
It is also worth noting from the reply that
- “Solder is an alloy from combination of metals such as tin and lead”.
For reference and before I am told that there is Lead (Pb) free solder. The link below gives information on the different types of solder.
Nevertheless and to get back on to the topic.
I would guess that also from this, an example of a mixture could be:
- Gunpowder which is a mixture of 3 chemicals, well a compound and 2 elements.
#chemistry, #chemical, #bonds, #compounds, #alloy, #mixture,
You can find me on Friendica at [email protected]