Chemistry
Saturday 5th March 2005
Chemists do make use of 
but they have different typesetting conventions from mathematicians. For example the chemical 
is quite different from the mathematical 
. Martin Hensel’s mhchem package allows the easy typing of chemical symbols. Here are some examples taken from mhchem’s documentation. Needless to say, not being a chemist, they don’t mean much to me 🙂
Hover over, or click on a formula, to see the underlying latex code.
![\cf{Fe`{III}[Fe`{III}Fe`{II}(CN)6]3}](/steve/wordpress/latexrender/pictures/6f5b5ab1be4ddca52258d82d0e97c93d.gif "\cf{Fe`{III}[Fe`{III}Fe`{II}(CN)6]3}")
![\cf{[Cd\{SC(NH2)2\}2].[Cr(SCN)4(NH3)2]2}](/steve/wordpress/latexrender/pictures/5525bf8020f81309956eb098dca3daa8.gif "\cf{[Cd\{SC(NH2)2\}2].[Cr(SCN)4(NH3)2]2}")
![\ce{Zn^2+
<=>[\ce{+ 2OH-}][\ce{+ 2H+}]
{\underset{\text{amphoteres Hydroxid}}{\ce{Zn(OH)2 v}}} %group!
<=>[\ce{+ 2OH-}][\ce{+ 2H+}]
{\underset{\text{Hydroxozikat}}{\cf{[Zn(OH)4]^2-}}}% group!
}](/steve/wordpress/latexrender/pictures/3258fb81487d8bbde0c867a0c8884a38.gif "\ce{Zn^2+
<=>[\ce{+ 2OH-}][\ce{+ 2H+}]
{\underset{\text{amphoteres Hydroxid}}{\ce{Zn(OH)2 v}}} %group!
<=>[\ce{+ 2OH-}][\ce{+ 2H+}]
{\underset{\text{Hydroxozikat}}{\cf{[Zn(OH)4]^2-}}}% group!
}")
![\ce{{{x\,}} Na(NH4)HPO4 ->[\Delta]
(NaPO3)_{{x}} + {{x\,}} NH3 ^ + {{x\,}} H2O}](/steve/wordpress/latexrender/pictures/45fcb99646cb2f1be84b2e9c718e2f73.gif "\ce{{{x\,}} Na(NH4)HPO4 ->[\Delta]
(NaPO3)_{{x}} + {{x\,}} NH3 ^ + {{x\,}} H2O}")
Nice and useful plugin, thanks for doing this 🙂
Comment by Wirjo — Monday 14th March 2005 1:41 am #
[…] February 3, 2009 Productivity Tags: chemistry, LaTeX There is a LaTeX package called mhchem available that makes typesetting chemical equations a lot easier. Sure, you could be lazy and type […]
Pingback by Chemistry with LaTeX — mhchem « revision — Monday 2nd February 2009 5:26 pm #
But, how do I install the mhchem on my wordpress blog? Are there some instructions for newbies somwhere?
Comment by Endeeder — Friday 22nd May 2009 5:50 pm #
mhchem is included with most TeX distributions so all you need to do is add the package to the compilation. In class.latexrender.php after the line
$string .= "\usepackage{amssymb}\n";add the line
$string .= "\usepackage{mhchem}\n";Comment by Steve — Friday 22nd May 2009 6:08 pm #