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

#LaTeX, #Learn, #typesetting, #chemistry, #basics

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