
Molecule of the Month - gscott
http://www.chm.bris.ac.uk/motm/motm.htm
======
apo
It used to be really hard to find free chemical information online. I remember
this site was one of the few back in the 90s that had anything on the topic.

Chemistry was dragged, kicking and screaming, into the Internet Age. The field
is still a laggard. As evidence, consider the aversion of chemists as a group
to preprint servers and their over-reliance on paywalled journals with
hypervigilant exclusivity policies.

Glad to see Molecule of the Month hasn't changed style in many years.

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kayhi
What information are you trying to find?

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jjoonathan
Spectra, rate constants / energy measurements, that sort of thing. Even simple
CRC fare doesn't have good representation in public databases.

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tomjakubowski
[https://webbook.nist.gov/chemistry/](https://webbook.nist.gov/chemistry/) is
pretty good and, for some reason, always hard for me to find again when I need
it. This time I'll just bookmark it.

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Bjartr
I know of another site doing a Molecule of the Month articles[1] that I
currently have in my RSS rotation.

As an aside, I wholeheartedly recommend the book "The Machinery of Life"[2] by
David Goodsell, the author of that site. The illustrations in the book have
the same style as the site I linked, and have the important feature, IMO, of
having a consistent scale[3] throughout the book, which helps put a lot of the
molecules in a more understandable context.

[1] [https://pdb101.rcsb.org/motm](https://pdb101.rcsb.org/motm)

[2]
[http://mgl.scripps.edu/people/goodsell/books/MoL2-preview.ht...](http://mgl.scripps.edu/people/goodsell/books/MoL2-preview.html)

[3] IIRC it was two distinct scales, but still, it was a nice touch

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ritwikgupta
I would like to mention [https://pqr.pitt.edu](https://pqr.pitt.edu), where
you can play around with molecules with your fingertips and get specific data
about them!

Note: I helped develop PQR.

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NKosmatos
Wow, those are very nice, informative and pretty fast 3D visualizations!!!
Just a small bug(or a feature), when you are viewing a molecule and remove the
surface you can’t switch it back on (from Safari on iPad).

~~~
ritwikgupta
Can't take credit for the 3D visualizations! That's all 3Dmol.js
([https://github.com/3dmol/3Dmol.js](https://github.com/3dmol/3Dmol.js)).
Fantastic work overall out of the University of Pittsburgh!

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singingfish
[http://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/?s=things+I+won%27t+wor...](http://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/?s=things+I+won%27t+work+with)
is brilliant.

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fourmii
Thanks for sharing this! Can't wait to show my son who has just recently taken
to memorizing the periodic table and has found joy in learning about different
molecules and compounds!

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sk5t
Excellent reading. However I must note that the page for ethylene glycol
appears to lead with a photo of windshield washer fluid (ammonia / alcohol /
soap), not coolant.

~~~
tlb
Ethylene glycol is used in windshield washer fluid in cold climates, up to 5%
concentration, as it helps de-ice windshields.

