# Paul Sutton

LaTeX and Chemistry

LaTeX is very useful for typesetting Chemistry.

A few examples are below

Normally we would the chemical formula for Methane as

$CH_4$

How do we achieve this in LaTeX? We to use maths mode.

$CH_4$


So the underscore gives us the required Subscript 4. The $tells latex to use maths mode. If we want to include both the Atomic number and Mass of an element. For example Hydrogen.$H^1_1$$H^6_12$ Or Carbon (illustrating how to type 2 numbers)$C^6_{12}$$C^6_{12}$ Puts one number above the other. So in the case the ^ gives us our superscript. If we wanted to write Sodium as an ion we would put$Na^{1+}$Note that the 1+ has been put inside curly braces {1+} $Na^{1+}$ So far this is pretty straightforward You can also type chemical equations, which is a little more involved: $H_2O(l) \hspace{0.5cm} \xrightarrow[\text{}]{\text{heat}}\hspace{0.5cm} = \hspace{0.5cm} H_2O (g)\$


The first \text{} would put any text under the arrow, while clearly the second puts the text on top.

As per instructions you need to tell LaTeX to use the package mathtools

\usepackage{mathtools}

I have also added some horizontal spacing so the equation is not squashed together.

however writefreely does not seem to render this fully. You can view this equation in Overleaf here

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