Price: Elements and Nuc1ides are
£14.95 each or £19.95 if bought together.
Upgrades are £2 each
Last Words:
These applications
contain an immense amount of data in
an readily accessible form for use in
Physics and Chemistry at secondary
school level and beyond.
Performance ****o
Features ****o
Value ****o
Overall ****o
Some aspects of physics and
chemistry such as the periodic
table of elements and nuclear
physics can appear to be
nothing more than just page
after page of numbers. Two
products from Atomic
software, Nuclides and
Elements, try to make these
two areas more accessible by
providing a vast quantity of
information in both numeric
and graphical forms to bring
these areas alive.
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Both applications are supplied
on single high density discs with
some printed instructions but
with the majority of the
instructions located in the help
files associated with each
application. It is useful to print
these out as they can not be
consulted while the programs
are running as they are both
single-tasking. The software
requires a machine with at least
2MB of memory and a multi-sync monitor.
Elements covers all the elements found in the periodic table up to element 111, with data provided on over 70 topics. These range from basic details such as melting points, latent heats and atomic weights which are required for GCSE work to advanced topics like Curie temperatures and the critical temperature for superconductors which are covered on degree courses.
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The program is based around
the periodic table which is
displayed together with several
areas containing data, such as
an area covering the numeric
values of the supplied data
associated with the selected
element. A graph is shown of
the selected data set, boiling
points in the screenshot, with
the periodic table annotated
with a graphic representing the
numeric value. This feature
enables variations with position
in the table to be followed with
ease. A second data set can also
be selected and this can be used
to create a scattergram to check
for correlations between data
sets. In addition to this, it is also
possible to select a single
element and to obtain a detailed
textual description covering
topics including its uses,
chemistry and some physical
properties.
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Elements is well presented
although, due to the large
amount of data on screen at any
one time, some of the text can
be hard to read. It is relatively
easy to explore the wealth of
data due to the well designed
controls which govern
movement between data sets.
With practice it becomes quite
elementary to see the links
between atomic properties.
Nuclides is really two
programs in one. The first is a
tutorial covering both
areas which are
relevant to the data
contained in the Segre
chart and many
others.
Items are
selected from a menu
of over 50 areas,
covering topics like
isotopes, spontaneous
fission and neutron
capture, which lead to
well-written
descriptions with
some including simple
animations.
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The second part of
Nuclides contains
details about the
2,400 or so isotopes
of the elements in the
form of a Segre chart.
This is a graph where
each isotope is classified by the
number of neutrons on the x-axis and the number of protons
on the y-axis. Each point is
coloured according to one of
four user selectable rules (half
life duration, decay mode,
isotope of element with the
greatest binding energy and least
mass of isobar). For example, in
the half life mode different
colours denote the different
durations of the isotopes' half
lives from stable to sub-milliseconds.
Once the main
chart has been drawn, it is
possible to zoom in to an area to
get more detail. Other available
options include displaying the
nuclear decays from a selected
isotope or those decays which
produce it. All the time there is a
large amount of data about the
selected items displayed on
the screen.
Nuclides is well thought out and simple to use. It has an extensive help file which provides detailed explanations of the operation of the software and its use.
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Both of the packages contain
an immense amount of
information but the only way to
extract data is by either writing it
down on paper or by using
screenshots (a facility provided
by the applications) to save a
screen as a sprite. The packages
would benefit greatly if it was
possible to save text and data as
files which could be used in
other packages such spreadsheets
and word processors.
by Mike Enderby, "Archimedes World" April 1996 issue
I have not altered any of the above reviews in any way whatsoever. The reviews are now over three years old and a great many additions and improvements to the programs have been made during that period. Indeed, the programs are now twice the size that they were when reviewed, such is the extent of new features and new data. Both are now so big that 2MB RAM is now insufficient to run either program, and 4MB must be available.
There has been a modest price increase since the programs were reviewed to reflect the magnitude of the increase in functionality of the programs.
Mike Enderby must have missed the feature whereby both text and data can be saved from within the program, but they were there all along. Just press the [T] and [D] keys to save text as RTF files, and data as CSV files, respectively.
Roger Darlington, Summer 1999.
Elements & Nuclides Review
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