ChemCafé

Among the loads of various ‘concentration calculators’ and ‘grams-versus-moles converters’ that are available online, I think the one provided by WolframAlpha can be quite useful and is nicely done. For example, if you need to know how many moles of iron are present in 5 grams, just query ‘how many moles are in 5 grams of iron?’ and the answer is computed and -in principle- given together with unit conversions. More generally, if you’d like to obtain information on, say, ruthenium, just type ‘ruthenium’ in the query bar, and you’ll quickly get the element’s position in the periodic table, as well as its most important chemical and physical properties. Last but not least, this very practical tool for students: if you enter ‘5M NaCl’, you directly obtain the quantity of salt to dissolve in order to prepare your solution!

Now, to be complete, I must mention that WolframAlpha comes with some limitations – or should I say, it is still being developed – but may well become an interesting alternative to other search engines. Among the limitations, if for example you enter ‘taxol’ in the query bar, you obtain a very approximate structure of the molecule, with no mention of stereochemistry, although it is of prime importance for this type of molecules. It also seems that the notion of ‘buffer’ does not (yet) exist, even though a ‘buffer calculator’ would be quite useful…

So have a look at WolframAlpha if you need simple information (on chemistry or whatever else btw) and also have a look at their blog, reporting their latest innovations and ideas.