Mar

3

Wired’s Top 10 Amazing Chemistry Videos

March 3, 2008 | Leave a Comment

Wired presents what they call the Top 10 Amazing Chemistry Videos. Some of the experiments are really spectacular.

May

14

The Best 55 Online Periodic Tables

May 14, 2007 | 20 Comments

Since its beginning, Triple Point has a category devoted to Periodic Tables where I write about the best periodic tables on the Internet. The idea of building a ranking like this begun before the hiatus this blog has suffered. I started collecting URLs of some interesting periodic tables and found myself with a huge list of addresses. My plan was to present a top 10 or a top 20 so I started cutting. My selection was based on factors like content, design, originality and usefulness. At the end I’ve got a list of not 10, neither 20 but 55 great online periodic tables!
I’ve selected periodic tables written only in English or Portuguese, so I intentionally left out many periodic tables written in Spanish, German, Chinese or Japanese, for instance. However many ranked periodic tables have versions in several languages.
This is not a final choice. This post will stay permanently open and I expect to update it very often with more high quality periodic tables. More, I would like to hear your suggestions. If you use or know periodic tables that you think should integrate this ranking write to me or leave a comment. Thanks.
So, let’s go to the ranking of the best periodic tables:

The Best

  1. WebElements Periodic Table
  2. Visual Elements Periodic Table
  3. Merck Periodic Table of the Elements
  4. Periodic Table Live!
  5. EnvironmentalChemistry Periodic Table of Elements
  6. The Wooden Periodic Table Table
  7. It’s Elemental - The Periodic Table of Elements
  8. Animated Periodic Table
  9. Interactive Periodic Table
  10. NIST Elemental Data Index
  11. Elementymology & Elements Multidict
  12. Radiochemistry Society Periodic Table of the Elements
  13. Wikipedia Periodic Table
  14. Chemical Elements Interactive Periodic Table of the Elements
  15. Los Alamos National Laboratory’s Periodic Table
  16. Genesis Education: Modeling the Periodic Table Interactive Simulation
  17. Eni Generalic Periodic Table of the Elements
  18. Mokeur’s Periodic Table
  19. APSIDIUM Extended Periodic Table
  20. Integral Scientist Modern Standard Periodic Table
  21. Chemi Cool Periodic Table
  22. Visual Entities Periodic Table Applet
  23. ACS Periodic Table
  24. Kostas Tsigaridis Periodic Table of Elements
  25. CRC Periodic Table Online
  26. Michael Dayah’s Periodic Table of Elements
  27. Corrosion Source Periodic Table of Elements
  28. Jalenack’s AJAX Periodic Table of the Elements
  29. David’s Whizzy Periodic Table
  30. IUPAC Periodic Table
  31. WebQC Periodic Table of Chemical Elements
  32. Rembar Periodic Table of the Elements

Specific

  1. Periodic Table of Elements in the Ocean
  2. Periodic Table of the Elements with Biological Roles
  3. Minerals Composition Periodic Table
  4. Periodic Table of the Isotopes
  5. Nuclear Periodic Table
  6. Cosmochemical Periodic Table of the Elements in the Solar System
  7. Enhanced NMR Periodic Table
  8. Elemental Spectra
  9. X-Ray Periodic Table
  10. Periodic Table of the Fermi Surfaces of Elemental Solids

In Portuguese

  1. Merck - Tabela Periódica Interactiva
  2. SoftCiências: Tabela Periódica v2.5
  3. Wikipedia: Tabela Periódica
  4. Enciclopedia Universal de Física e Química: Tabela Periódica

Funny

  1. Periodic Table of ComicBooks
  2. Poetic Table of Elements
  3. Sci Fiction: Periodic Table
  4. Dartmouth College Periodic Puzzle
  5. “The Elements” song by Tom Lehrer

Odd

  1. Idiotic Table of the Elements - Uncyclopedia
  2. Table of Condiments That Periodically Go Bad
  3. Periodic Table of the Operators
  4. The SU Periodic Table - A Collaborative Photo Project

Further Reading

  1. Dmitriy Mendeleev Online
  2. C&EN It’s Elemental: The Periodic Table
  3. Periodic Table Data Mapping
  4. Origin of the Elements and Formation of the Solar System
  5. Printable Periodic Tables
  6. The Most Beautiful Periodic Table Displays in the World

Apr

26

My Other Science Blog: Science Quick Picks

April 26, 2007 | Leave a Comment

Science Quick Picks is a typical cut-and-paste blog, which I maintain as a sort of bookmarks collection of interesting science news and resources and share with my readers. Science Quick Picks has now around one thousand posts and some of them are quite popular. On the restart of Triple Point I leave here links to some of the most recent and to some of the most popular posts:

Most Recent:

Most Popular:

Apr

26

Finally!…

April 26, 2007 | Leave a Comment

The transfer is finally complete! I had more problems than I had expected, but this blog is now ready to function in WordPress. I have yet minor things to do like checking links but the primary task is complete. The site’s structure is almost the same. The main modification is that the best chemistry sites now have their own page named The List. In this list you can find the sites I consider to be the most valuable chemistry resources. All these sites were previously reviewed in Ponto Triplo (my Portuguese blog). You can find some of these reviews translated to English in this blog.
I hope to restart posting shortly. In the meantime, if you detect some errors please let me know. Thanks.

Feb

23

Moving

February 23, 2007 | 2 Comments

More than one year after the last post, this blog will rebirth in a new home. Triple Point will move from TypePad to WordPress in the next few days. Expect some turbulence. I will post again after setting everything up.

Feb

15

This blog did not close (yet)…

February 15, 2006 | 5 Comments

For several reasons, I am not being able of updating this blog as much I would like. I have been making some minor changes, for example, on the lists of recommended blogs. However, no new posts. As I have explained to those who kindly wrote to me asking what was going on, this pause is temporary. There are many things happening in the world of Chemistry in the Internet and I plan to report it here very soon.

Dec

6

Convert Plus

December 6, 2005 | 1 Comment

Just arrived in my Inbox: Convert Plus – Online Units Conversion. My first impression is that it seems to be a very interesting online converter. It is very comprehensive and has the benefit of converting some units and measures to somewhat exotic units systems, which is not usually found in this kind of converters.

Nov

29

Educational Blogs

November 29, 2005 | 1 Comment

Recently, Ponto Media has pointed to an interesting list of educational blogs: Top 20 EduBlogs (check also the comments). A Top like this is, above all, a personal selection. Probably because of that, George Siemens, author of elearnspace, has decided to update its own list of Educational and Technology blogs (again, check also the comments), building a very impressive resource on this subject. Definitively, a must visit page.

Nov

22

Universities Worldwide

November 22, 2005 | 4 Comments

Universities Worldwide is the title of one of the most popular posts in my other blog Quick Picks, Quick Site of the Day section. In that post I recommend two of the best Universities directories that I know - Braintrack University Index and Universities Worldwide (that gives the title to the post) and a list of Universities directories on the web, the Best Indices of Colleges and Universities World-Wide. It seems that there are a lot of people from everywhere looking for information about Universities. May be a good suggestion is to recommend also a visit to the World Universities’ Ranking on the Web. Just in case…

By the way, other recent Quick Sites of the Day include: Visionlearning, Einstein Light, Live Science, Physics Flash Animations, Science & Society Picture Library e Snowflakes and Snow Crystals. All of these are outstanding sites which deserve to be visited.

Just to finish, and in case you haven’t noticed, the most recent posts of Quick Picks now appear in this blog, on the right column.

Nov

21

Prizes and Something More

November 21, 2005 | Leave a Comment

It is not new that the 2005 Nobel Prize in Chemistry was awarded jointly to Yves Chauvin, Robert H. Grubbs and Richard R. Schrock “for the development of the metathesis method in organic synthesis”. Recently, in recognition of their achievement, American Chemical Society (ACS) decided to provide free access to 101 articles published in ACS journals over the past 10 years by chemistry’s newest Nobel Laureates, namely in Journal of the American Chemical Society, Organometallics, The Journal of Organic Chemistry and Organic Letters. For the papers published prior to 1996 the access to the abstract is provided.

(Almost) Related: The 2005 Ig Nobel Prizes winners are already known. One should remember that “every Ig Nobel Prize winner has done something that first makes people laugh then makes them think”. The Ig Nobel Prize in Chemistry is a confirmation of this statement. The proud winners were Edward Cussler of the University of Minnesota and Brian Gettelfinger of the University of Minnesota and the University of Wisconsin, “for conducting a careful experiment to settle the longstanding scientific question: can people swim faster in syrup or in water?” For the records, the article, named “Will Humans Swim Faster or Slower in Syrup?”, has been published on the American Institute of Chemical Engineers Journal.

Nov

3

Chemistry Pictures

November 3, 2005 | 6 Comments

When I was reading the comment of Marko Petkovic to the previous post, I’ve decided to recommend his site, Chemistry Pictures, where some interesting images can be found (at least for students and teachers). All of these images can be used freely since they are in the public domain.

Other interesting chemistry pictures resources:

Oct

25

Visions of Science 2005

October 25, 2005 | 1 Comment

Another year, another excellent collection of photographs about the Science behind the simple things in Nature: Visions of Science Photographic Award 2005. From the site: ‘So, what is a Vision of Science? To the judges of the Awards, a Vision of Science is an attention-grabbing image that gives new insight into the world of science and the workings of nature. It may show something never seen before, it may explain a scientific phenomenon, it may illustrate scientific data or it may simply be an image that shows the beauty of science.’

Aug

6

Science and Blogs

August 6, 2005 | Leave a Comment

The Power of the Blog is a worth reading article by David Secko about scientists and blogs, published on The Scientist. Very interesting, the list of science blogs included.

Jun

28

37th International Chemistry Olympiad

June 28, 2005 | Leave a Comment

The 37th International Chemistry Olympiad will take place in Taiwan, from July 16 to 25. Additional information can be found here.

Update: According to the site, South Korea was the winner of this Olympiad, since their students won 4 gold medals. The young Russian Alexey Zeifman won the absolute first prize. The full list of winners can be found here.

Jun

28

1001 things to do with Liquid Nitrogen

June 28, 2005 | Leave a Comment

A site that aims to show that liquid nitrogen can be used for much more than just to cool things down to 77 K…

Jun

27

Green Chemistry

June 27, 2005 | Leave a Comment

Very recently, University of Oregon experts have created GEM, Greener Education Materials for Chemists, an online resource dedicated to Green Chemistry. The idea is to develop an interactive collection of laboratory exercises, lecture materials, course syllabi and multimedia content that illustrate chemical concepts, important for green chemistry. Still in the University site, the Green Chemistry Center is worth looking.
For those interested in this topic, two good starting points are the ACS’s Introductory Readings in Green Chemistry and the EPA’s Green Chemistry site.

Jun

27

All about Chlorine – Part II: The Chlorine Tree

June 27, 2005 | Leave a Comment

I am using the same post title that I have already used for Chlorine Online, since we have again the same subject, now presented in a different way. In fact, The Chlorine Tree invites us to explore its branches in order we can discover all about chlorine: from the production process to the chlorine use on a multitude of products and processes. The idea is excellent and the resulting site (built using Flash) is very user-friendly. Worth exploring.

Jun

21

Chemistry of Photography

June 21, 2005 | Leave a Comment

Now that everything is digital, this post seems meaningless. Or maybe not. You decide. Specially dedicated to those who want to know how to set up a photographic lab at home, here are some interesting sites:

Jack’s Photographic and Chemistry Site
Chemistry of Photography (Cheresources)
The Chemistry of Photography (Developer Solutions for Black and White Photography)
CHEM 2502 Chemistry of Photography Laboratory

Jun

17

Chemical Challenges

June 17, 2005 | Leave a Comment

Do you like a good challenge in Chemistry? If you do, you should try Innocentive Challenges – Chemistry. The incentives seem to be very interesting…

Jun

16

Relaxing

June 16, 2005 | Leave a Comment

Until I restart with the “heavy” chemistry posts, have some fun with these fabulous images: Eye of Science e 2005 Art of Science Exhibition.