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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