Friday, February 18, 2011

Chemical reagent widget

I promised we’d start rolling out more useful chemistry database tools. So. here’s the Wolfram|Alpha chemical reagent table widget brought created by Adam Azman of chemical dictionary fame.

“I created it using the very user-friendly walk-through W|A provides on their site,” Azman told me. “It went through three iterations before settling on the format seen on the blog. I’m also planning on releasing the desktop gadget version for Vista/7 or OS X as requested by several users in the near future.”

This chemical tool lets you look up valid (and CAS enabled) chemistry data without having to worry that some vandal changed all the densities on Wikipedia.

To quote Adam:

“Type in the chemical name, and it returns the molecular formula and structure (just to verify you entered the right compound), and tells you the molecular mass, density, boiling point (if you need to distill that liquid first), and a few other physical properties – everything you need to fill in your reagent table. It also recognizes chemical formulas, like TiCl4, and shorthand notation, like EtOH.”

You can grab the embed code for your own site and/or share the widget with fellow chemists and others, here are the details.