Chemical Words List

An anonymous reader writes "Mark Nandor, a teacher of mathematics at The Wellington School, has recently posted a new chemical words page. For those who haven't seen this before, it is a list of English words that can be spelled using chemical symbols."

Comments

Valid molecules?

[allanc]

I want to know how many of these words' constituent chemicals could actually combine into a valid molecule.

The wooden periodic table

[cyclone96]

Theodore Gray has put together a surprisingly interesting site based on his wooden periodic table of the elements (that actually contains samples of the elements - except the ones that would kill the builder and maybe a few of the neighbors).

On the site he has a mathematica based app (he works at Wolfram) which will take a string of characters and attempt to construct it from element sybols.

One Line (Though a long one)

[jefu]

egrep -i "^((ac)|(ag)|(al)|(am)|(ar)|(as)|(at)|(au)|(b)|(ba )|(be)|(bh)|(bi)|(bk)|(br)|(c)|(ca)|(cd)|(ce)|(cf) |(cl)|(cm)|(co)|(cr)|(cs)|(cu)|(db)|(ds)|(dy)|(er) |(es)|(eu)|(f)|(fe)|(fm)|(fr)|(ga)|(gd)|(ge)|(h)|( he)|(hf)|(hg)|(ho)|(hs)|(i)|(in)|(ir)|(k)|(kr)|(la )|(li)|(lr)|(lu)|(md)|(mg)|(mn)|(mo)|(mt)|(n)|(na) |(nb)|(nd)|(ne)|(ni)|(no)|(np)|(o)|(os)|(p)|(pa)|( pb)|(pd)|(pm)|(po)|(pr)|(pt)|(pu)|(ra)|(rb)|(re)|( rf)|(rg)|(rh)|(rn)|(ru)|(s)|(sb)|(sc)|(se)|(sg)|(s i)|(sm)|(sn)|(sr)|(ta)|(tb)|(tc)|(te)|(th)|(ti)|(t l)|(tm)|(u)|(uub)|(uuh)|(uup)|(uuq)|(uut)|(v)|(w)| (xe)|(y)|(yb)|(zn)|(zr))+$" your-favorite-word-list

Though I'll admit I used a one line python program to construct the regular expression from a file listing the chemical element symbols.

Howdy, kids.

[nandorman]

'Sup, y'all?

Yes, it is a waste of time.

Yes, I'm sure there are better/faster ways to generate the list of words - the reason I used Mathematica is that I was finding the 2x2, 3x3, 4x4, 5x5, ..., 11x11 word squares and magic word squares. Just checking every matrix using all of the possible 7-symbol chemical words would mean that you're looking at evaluating 7685305573422409190000000 matrices to determine if each is a valid square - I don't think there's a one-line code that would work and take less time than a few billion universe-ages. Using Mathematica to set up some shortcuts in evaluating those is pretty easy, though. Since I was in Mathematica already, and knew I had some restrictions (like using only words with distinct chemical symbols), why use something else? Besides, my job is not in the technology industry at all, so I only know 6-7 programming languages - and not any of the new ones. And it's not like I spent my life doing this, it was background while I did my actual teaching job. So if it took a long time, what do I care?

No, I'm not a professor (not sure how that one got started). I have a Ph.D. in physics from Ohio State, so the parents and administration at Wellington make me call myself "Dr. Nandor"; otherwise, I'd just as soon go by "Mr. Nandor." Besides, the kids like calling me "Doc."

No, I didn't even think to censor the list. Oops. Since it's on a school website, I'll have to *** some things out.

No, I'm not sure how "berg" didn't make it onto the list, and I'll have to add it. I only found Rg words at the end of my "work," since I didn't know element 111 had actually been officially named, so I must have copied/pasted it in incorrectly into code I was using.

Hope y'all enjoyed it for the random "entertainment" it was meant to be. My brother submitted the story, so.... thanks?

Nandor