Sciencemadness Discussion Board

The 'Guide' to Chemicals

The Volatile Chemist - 2-11-2014 at 13:43

I'm sure everyone's heard of the "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy", a fictional publication referred to in a book under the same title.
I realized that though there are CAS numbers and such that one can freely look up to find a chemical name, data, and such, but there is no central source that summarizes the properties, sources, and uniqueness of chemicals that amateur chemists might want to make or collect. Using the format of the fictional 'guide', I have created a program that reads a database from my website and allows for it's searching. I just need entries to this publication, which I have titled The Chemist's Guide to Chemicals (Glossary), or TCGTCG (tcg2).
Before you state: "We already have a chemical wiki!", consider the purpose of the wiki, and the purpose of a chemical glossary. Both, a chemical wiki, and a chemical glossary, exist outside of Sciencemadness, but a wiki was created because it's information could be focused around amateur chemists. For your consideration, the entry for copper(II) sulfate is below:
Quote:
Copper(II) sulfate - Copper(II) sulfate is a copper(II), water sol. comp., w/ a plain, bright, blue col. Heating helps diss. in water. Single displacement rctn. occurs in water w/ reactive metals when soln. is heated (eg. w/ Al, Fe). Most insol. copper(II) compounds prec. by simple double displacement rctn. with this compound.

For compression of the database, abbreviations are used, but don't get hung up by them, if you don't like them, just say so, I'll get rid of them.
The program is available for download here:
http://thisisatest.x10.mx/ptl/tcgtcg.exe
Try searching copper to find it's only entry at this time, copper(II) sulfate.
I really think this could be useful, as if a chemical doesn't der\serve a page in the wiki, it can still get a "mostly harmless" in the chemical guide :)
If you do think it's useful, email me at productions.peppertree@gmail.com to add entries you write up. We can discuss adding author pseudonyms later if there's enough interest.
Thanks for your consideration!
-Nathan

DrMario - 2-11-2014 at 13:59

Before I even start criticizing the abbreviations... I gotta ask: what's that executable for? You can imagine that a lot of us will be very hesitant to download and run an executable, just to read some text. And if I misunderstood the purpose of that EXE, well, it really isn't my fault.

The Volatile Chemist - 2-11-2014 at 14:04

haha, it's fine. I considered everyone would consider a guy who's been rather active on SM for a while safe to download an executable from. It's actually so that when you search it you can use regular expressions (A programatic way to search databases and such).
And if they're that bad, I can remove them. I suppose you haven't read the "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy". Oh well.
Edit:
Revised - Copper(II) sulfate - Copper(II) sulfate is a copper(II), water soluble compound, w/ a plain, bright, blue color. Single displacement reaction occurs in water w/ reactive metals when a solution is heated (eg. w/ Al, Fe). Most insoluble copper(II) compounds precipitate by simple double displacement reaction with this compound.

[Edited on 11-2-2014 by The Volatile Chemist]

Texium - 2-11-2014 at 15:29

Ok, although I'm aware you said to not say "I don't get the point, don't we already have something like this?" I've got to say: I don't get the point, don't we already have something like this?

I think that the Sciencemadness Wiki as it continues to grow will provide a quick reference to information about all chemicals that may be encountered, in addition to a wealth of information regarding equipment, techniques, and theory. At least that's what I planned it to be originally. I don't know what you mean by a chemical "not deserving a page in the wiki." Theoretically, eventually everything relevant to us in any way will get a page. Hopefully soon we'll be able to implement quick reference info boxes with general properties and stuff pulled from CRC and other reference books for easy access. That would be pretty much like what you want to make.

Brain&Force - 2-11-2014 at 15:42

If there were convenient calculator functions, delta H & S tables, and other functional bits, it would be awesome, especially on phones and tablets.

Can you make a Windows Store or Android app out of this? More importantly, can you fix the DPI scaling issue? The app is blurry on my Surface.

[Edited on 2.11.2014 by Brain&Force]

DrMario - 2-11-2014 at 16:53

As an ex Unix system admin, I certainly like regular expressions. I'll give it a try.

Regarding the Sciencemadness Wiki: at this point I don't really feel the love for the project, as it doesn't have any entry point or structure, so I wouldn't take that as a very serious alternative to whatever you are trying to achieve.

What is a more serious contender, though, is good-ole Wikipedia. IMHO, the ideal electronic Guide to Chemicals would suck up all the info from Wikipedia, and then add to it.

Brain&Force - 2-11-2014 at 17:49

Quote: Originally posted by DrMario  
As an ex Unix system admin, I certainly like regular expressions. I'll give it a try.

Regarding the Sciencemadness Wiki: at this point I don't really feel the love for the project, as it doesn't have any entry point or structure, so I wouldn't take that as a very serious alternative to whatever you are trying to achieve.

What is a more serious contender, though, is good-ole Wikipedia. IMHO, the ideal electronic Guide to Chemicals would suck up all the info from Wikipedia, and then add to it.


Can you elaborate on your concerns in the Sciencemadness Wiki thread, stickied in Miscellaneous? It would help us out a lot.

The problem we have with Wikipedia is the lack of information relevant to amateur chemists - mostly regarding acquisition and disposal of most chemicals.

DrMario - 2-11-2014 at 18:00

Quote: Originally posted by Brain&Force  
Quote: Originally posted by DrMario  
As an ex Unix system admin, I certainly like regular expressions. I'll give it a try.

Regarding the Sciencemadness Wiki: at this point I don't really feel the love for the project, as it doesn't have any entry point or structure, so I wouldn't take that as a very serious alternative to whatever you are trying to achieve.

What is a more serious contender, though, is good-ole Wikipedia. IMHO, the ideal electronic Guide to Chemicals would suck up all the info from Wikipedia, and then add to it.


Can you elaborate on your concerns in the Sciencemadness Wiki thread, stickied in Miscellaneous? It would help us out a lot.

The problem we have with Wikipedia is the lack of information relevant to amateur chemists - mostly regarding acquisition and disposal of most chemicals.


Regarding the SM Wiki: I have written a couple of posts with my concerns about it, in the thread about the Wiki itself:
http://www.sciencemadness.org/talk/viewthread.php?tid=30655&...
In very brief: there is no index. There is no way to see what is there already, there is no discoverability. I am not going to just stab in the dark to see if I can find something interesting there. This state makes me uninterested even to contribute to it, let alone to use it - how can I contribute when I don't know where the Wiki is lacking? The fact that after I explained my concerns there was 0 interest in fixing the situation makes me say that The Volatile Chemist's efforts are not redundant.

[Edited on 3-11-2014 by DrMario]

The Volatile Chemist - 2-11-2014 at 19:17

Still, my attempts may be futile. I prefer a wiki myself, but I just want one more organized than the sm wiki. I thinnk part of the reason I tried to start this project was ecause 1.5 yrs. ago I tried to start a chemistry wiki on my website, but since I didn't know about sm, I had no way to spread word. So I wanted my own publication of compiled chemistry information. I also still sugest migration from wikia (To my server if you want), but I guess I'll give up 'the guide' idea.

Texium - 2-11-2014 at 19:26

I agree with your points. I would definitely prefer to have the wiki on a different platform that is more open and customizable than Wikia, because frankly, Wikia is crap when it comes to suiting the individual needs of the different wikis. As far as knowing how to contribute, I guess it wasn't as much of a problem when there was almost nothing on it, since pretty much everything still needed to have a page made for it. Now it's a lot easier to get confused. I get that. I also think that there should just be a simple list of all of the pages with no strings attached. Why that isn't available, I have no idea, but I can't easily do anything about it as long as the wiki is hosted by Wikia. I will try to figure out some alternative options and get back to everyone if I find a good possibility.

The Volatile Chemist - 2-11-2014 at 19:32

Quote: Originally posted by zts16  
I agree with your points. I would definitely prefer to have the wiki on a different platform that is more open and customizable than Wikia, because frankly, Wikia is crap when it comes to suiting the individual needs of the different wikis. As far as knowing how to contribute, I guess it wasn't as much of a problem when there was almost nothing on it, since pretty much everything still needed to have a page made for it. Now it's a lot easier to get confused. I get that. I also think that there should just be a simple list of all of the pages with no strings attached. Why that isn't available, I have no idea, but I can't easily do anything about it as long as the wiki is hosted by Wikia. I will try to figure out some alternative options and get back to everyone if I find a good possibility.

I can host a media-wiki wiki on my server, and use a domain name shortener to give it a good name. It'd havee approx. 1 Gb of space. Interested? Obviously, images would have to be hosted elsewhere, but that wouldn't be an issue. Media-wiki is/was made by wikipedia.org, so it has a lot of options aand such. Would that be better than wikia?