Some notes
The "Tabela Periódica" project started in 1994 by initiative
of Softciências,
a non-profitable organisation devoted to the
production of educational software. Version 1.0
was a Windows program that included most of the properties
of the elements that also make part of this latest version.
Some time later,
we felt that we should add some more information concerning, for
example, the history of the discovery of the elements, their applications,
in which minerals they can be found in Nature, etc. We also took
the chance to improve the visual aspect of the program. So, in 1997,
"Tabela Periódica v2.0" was born. It had several hundred of hypertext
pages with information on the elements, properties of more than 2000
isotopes, spectral lines, etc. In parallel we also developed
a web version (in Portuguese only).
In 1998, Softciências
asked us to do an English translation of the program. This work was finished
in the beginning of 1999. Recent developments in web technology
(CSS, JavaScript) also allowed us to do some improvements to the web
version. "Periodic Table v2.5" web site was then
inaugurated in the 1st of February of 1999.
In the production of this program, we used as major sources of information
the following books:
- John Emsley, The Elements, 2nd Edition, Clarendon Press, Oxford,
1991
- David R. Lide (Editor-in-Chief), CRC Handbook of Chemistry and
Physics, 74th Edition, CRC Press, 1993-1994
- Collier's Encyclopedia, Macmillan Educational Company, New York
- Enciclopédia Luso-Brasileira de Cultura, Verbo
- Clifford A. Hampel (Editor), The Encyclopedia of the Chemical
Elements, Reinhold Book Corporation, New York, 1968
- G. D. Parkes e J. W. Mellor, Mellor's Modern Inorganic
Chemistry
- M. Cannon Sneed e J. Lewis Maynard, General Inorganic Chemistry
- D. N. Trífonov e V. D. Trífonov e , Como Fueron Descubiertos los
Elementos Químicos, Mir, 1984
We also used a large number of OS (Windows/DOS, several flavors of Unix, VMS) ,
of programming languages (Borland C++ 3.1 and 4.5, Microsoft Visual C++,
Gnu C, Perl, Sed, Bash, JavaScript) and of other programs (Netscape Navigator,
Emacs, Microsoft Word, Excel and Internet Explorer, etc.)
We had help from a number of people and institutions that we gratefully
acknowledge:
- Museu de Mineralogia da Universidade de Coimbra
- Biblioteca do Departamento de Física da Universidade de Coimbra
- Biblioteca do Departamento de Química da Universidade de Coimbra
- Biblioteca do Departamento de Ciências da Terra da Universidade de
Coimbra
- Exploratório Infante D. Henrique - Coimbra
- Alexandre Ramires
- Sílvio Costa
Finally we would like to introduce ourselves. The authors of this "Periodic Table"
are Miguel Marques (programming,
web, etc.),
João Cardoso (information, hypertext pages, translation, design
etc.), João Paiva
(logistics and advising), Prof. Carlos Fiolhais and Prof. Victor
Gil (scientific advising) and finally our collaborators
Patrícia Aguiar and Dário Fonseca.
