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Chemical Words List

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on from the realm-of-crazy dept.

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."

3 of 197 comments (clear)

  1. Cool by Anonymous+Crowhead · · Score: 5, Funny

    Can 50 lines of perl and word list get me a main page story too?

  2. One Line (Though a long one) by jefu · · Score: 5, Interesting
    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.

  3. Howdy, kids. by nandorman · · Score: 5, Interesting

    '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