# The &kalzium; Handbook

Carsten
Niehaus

    cniehaus@kde.org

Robert
Gogolok

    mail@robert-gogolok.de

Developer
2001
2002
2004
Carsten Niehaus
&FDLNotice;
2004-01-07
0.9.3

&kalzium; is a program which shows you the Periodic System of the elements (PSE). You can use &kalzium; to search for information about the elements or to learn facts about the PSE.

KDE
education
elements
chemistry
PSE
education
kalzium

## Introduction

&kalzium; provides you with all kind of information about the PSE (Periodic System of Elements.) You can lookup lots of information about the elements and also use visualizations to show them. If the information provided by &kalzium; are not sufficient for you you can look up more via the internet. It is free and licensed under the &GNU; Public License.

## Using &kalzium;

Here are screenshots of &kalzium; in action:

&kalzium; main screen, directly after the start
&kalzium; main screen

&kalzium; is very easy to use. It is specially designed for students of all ages to use as a small and quick database.

If you are too good for this world, you can change the level.

### The information dialog

&kalzium; with the training option
&kalzium; with the training option dialog visible

Here is a screenshot of &kalzium;'s information dialog.

In this dialog you get all the information &kalzium; provides on that element. The dialog is divided into three parts: General, States and Energies.

If you click on Web Lookup &kalzium; will get more information from the web (in a new window).

### Calculations

In &kalzium; we only provide one calculation. This is called KMol. In the field Formula you can enter a totals formula and will get the molecular weight Mw measured in u and the elemental composition. KMol knows about all of the elements in the PSE.

### Color schemes

&kalzium; can show you which elements are where with regard to their Periodic block and group , their behavior with acid and which matter state (solid/liquid/vapor) they are in at a given temperature.

the State of Matter Dialog

&kalzium; can show you which elements are solid/liquid/vapor at a given temperature.

### Timeline

The Timeline feature allows you to explore the elements of the set time period. This is great for getting a feel for how the PSE evolved over time, as more and more elements were discovered. You can active this feature either with the most-right icon in the iconbar or via Settings Show Toolbar. If it is activated you will see a slider below the PSE and an LCD which displays the number 2004. If you move the slider you will notice that some elements disappear if you move it to the right and reappear if you move it to the right. Furthermore the number will change constantly.

The number represents the date you are looking at. If you move the slider to &eg; 1856 you will only see the elements which where known in the year 1856.

You will notice that some elements are not even shown in the year 2004. This is because some of the elements have not been discovered yet but are predicted to exist.

### Numeration

You can change the numeration to IUPAC and CAS or switch it off entirely.

#### IUPAC

The IUPAC is the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry. This is an organization which defines most of the standards for chemical concerns.

An A means that that period is a maingroup, a B means it is a Nebengruppe.

#### CAS

The CAS is the Chemical Abstracts Service. With their numeration the 18 groups have the numbers from 1 to 18. Though the IUPAC numeration is the official, the CAS numeration is what is used in classrooms and laboratories.

#### Off

If this option is active, no period-numeration will be in effect.

## Configuring &kalzium;

&kalzium; has many configuration options, which you can access by opening the Preferences window by selecting Configure &kalzium;... from the Settings menu. The window is depicted below:

Display Options Window
Display Options Window

## Questions and Answers

Will I ever have to pay for &kalzium;?

No, never. But the author always welcomes a nice mail or a DVD as a Thank You. &kalzium; is licensed under the GPL, so you will never have to pay for this program.

Will there ever be a &Windows; version?

No, at the moment not, but you can download the source and make your own windows version. It should not be a big problem, because it is written with Trolltech's &Qt; libs. But what do you need &Windows; for? Get the latest &Linux;, and live on the edge.

## How can I contribute?

Support me with data.

In the world of science, the progress is quite fast. If you ever find an incorrect or missing value, please drop me an email.

Find some bugs or give some suggestions

If you find any bugs in the program, or have a few suggestions for improvements, please let me know at cniehaus@kde.org.

## Credits and License

&kalzium;

Program Copyright, 2001, 2002 Carsten Niehaus cniehaus@kde.org

Contributors:

- Robert Gogolok, lots of help and coding

&underFDL; &underGPL;

## Installation

### How to obtain &kalzium;

&install.intro.documentation;

### Requirements

&kalzium; itself can be found on The &kalzium; home page and is part of the KDE-Edu project

You can find a list of changes in the file ChangeLog in the distribution of kalzium.

### Compilation and Installation

&install.compile.documentation;

&documentation.index;