Chemical Equation Solver

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Chemical Equation Solver

Edward H 24 Jun 2008 06:54

Some of you may have already seen this, but here's my chemical equation solver. I think the redeeming aspect of it is that it takes string input and parses it instead of asking a billion questions about how many products or reactants or elements you have. Plus, it's only 928 bytes!

Here it is.

Well, I've pretty much finished this, but I suspect that I haven't optimized this fully (for speed). The program took six ticks on a SE to solve the equation on the bottom-left in the screenshot. On a 83+ I imagine it'd take 15 ticks, crazy! Could anyone skilled with TI-BASIC take a look and see if there's anything left I can do to make it go a little faster?

Last edited on 24 Jun 2008 17:23 by Edward H Show more

Re: Chemical Equation Solver

GoVegan 24 Jun 2008 07:55

I really like this program!

But before I start looking for a few optimisations, it is best to fix all of the bugs. I found a problem with an example of a Decomposition Reaction:

Pb(III)2O3 → Pb(II)O + O2 Pb2O3 → PbO + O2 2Pb2O3 → 4PbO + O2

Instead, your program gives the results {0 0 0} when I type in this:

Pb2*3O3=Pb*2O+O2

Perhaps your program doesn't like dealing with multiple ions with molecules?

Cheers ~ James Kanjo

Last edited on 24 Jun 2008 08:00 by GoVegan Show more

Re: Chemical Equation Solver

Edward H 24 Jun 2008 14:43

If you type in just "Pb2O3=PbO+O2" you get {2 4 1}.

I think in general you only write the charges like that if the whole compound is charged; in this case, Pb2O3 is not charged. The (III) from Pb(III) is already implied by the fact that there are two lead and three oxygen in the molecule. I'm actually a bit rusty on chemistry, but this should be remedied when I take AP Chem next year. =D

Well, I'm glad you like this program! I spent a looong time figuring out how to parse the molecular formulas and I'm glad it paid off.

Last edited on 24 Jun 2008 22:53 by Edward H Show more