Whether you are an aspiring Chemistry student or just a normal know-it-all geek, the Periodic Table offers you the simplest way to keep tabs on the atomic elements and their chemical properties. And now you can carry all that data (and more) aboard your Android device with Periodic Table Droid, an app that contains the Periodic Table, a list of 55 properties of each element, and a link to each element’s Wikipedia article.
You can search for an element by name or symbol, and results appear as you type. You can customize the appearance of the Periodic Table, too: For instance, you might change the background color by state (solid, liquid, or gas) at a reference temperature or by crystal structure. You also can change which four properties of an element display in its square in the Periodic Table. A YouTube video shows how this works.
Being able to reconfigure the Periodic Table is particularly useful because it lets you focus on the attributes of an element that are most pertinent to a given purpose. For instance, if you’re already familiar with the element’s symbol, you might prefer to display the element’s oxidation state rather than its name.
You can copy information to the clipboard and paste it into another app. Categories of information include element name, atomic number, atomic weight, symbol, category, state at 0°C, boiling point, melting point, electronegativity, crystal structure, period, group, electron affinity, valence, ionization potentials, atomic radius, shear modulus, density, thermal conductivity, and specific heat, among others.
You can reorder the list of these properties so that the most-used ones appear at the top. If you’re a student working your way through a Chemistry textbook, being able to reorder properties will save you a lot of time when you do your homework.
This great app is free, so go ahead and download it. You might learn something.
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