Molecule of the Month | Hacker News Reader

Molecule of the Month

chm.bris.ac.uk

94 pointsgscott16 comments

It used to be really hard to find free chemical information online. I remember this site was one of the few back in the 90s that had anything on the topic.

Chemistry was dragged, kicking and screaming, into the Internet Age. The field is still a laggard. As evidence, consider the aversion of chemists as a group to preprint servers and their over-reliance on paywalled journals with hypervigilant exclusivity policies.

Glad to see Molecule of the Month hasn't changed style in many years.

What information are you trying to find?

Spectra, rate constants / energy measurements, that sort of thing. Even simple CRC fare doesn't have good representation in public databases.

https://webbook.nist.gov/chemistry/ is pretty good and, for some reason, always hard for me to find again when I need it. This time I'll just bookmark it.

I know of another site doing a Molecule of the Month articles[1] that I currently have in my RSS rotation.

As an aside, I wholeheartedly recommend the book "The Machinery of Life"[2] by David Goodsell, the author of that site. The illustrations in the book have the same style as the site I linked, and have the important feature, IMO, of having a consistent scale[3] throughout the book, which helps put a lot of the molecules in a more understandable context.

[1] https://pdb101.rcsb.org/motm

[2] http://mgl.scripps.edu/people/goodsell/books/MoL2-preview.ht...

[3] IIRC it was two distinct scales, but still, it was a nice touch

I would like to mention https://pqr.pitt.edu, where you can play around with molecules with your fingertips and get specific data about them!

Note: I helped develop PQR.

Wow, those are very nice, informative and pretty fast 3D visualizations!!! Just a small bug(or a feature), when you are viewing a molecule and remove the surface you can’t switch it back on (from Safari on iPad).

Can't take credit for the 3D visualizations! That's all 3Dmol.js (https://github.com/3dmol/3Dmol.js). Fantastic work overall out of the University of Pittsburgh!

Fantastic. Amazing. Well done.

Molecule of the Month linked there is broken. I'll keep checking back but is someone aware of that?

Err, "molecule of the week."

Ah, just noticed that. I'll let the current devs know! Thanks!

http://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/?s=things+I+won%27t+wor... is brilliant.

Thanks for sharing this! Can't wait to show my son who has just recently taken to memorizing the periodic table and has found joy in learning about different molecules and compounds!

Excellent reading. However I must note that the page for ethylene glycol appears to lead with a photo of windshield washer fluid (ammonia / alcohol / soap), not coolant.

Ethylene glycol is used in windshield washer fluid in cold climates, up to 5% concentration, as it helps de-ice windshields.

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