Re: [seul-edu] [prevettl@cochise.cc.az.us: re: WIMS, a web math educational software for Linux]

[Georges Khaznadar <georgesk@boltz.univ-littoral.fr>]

Roger Dingledine writes:

 > applications. We are currently looking for chemistry, biology, astronomy
 > 
 > or physics servers of the same caliber as WIMS. 

WIMS will probably be able to serve physics and chemistry exercises
soon. I'm working on two code snippets which enable wims (with the
unvaluable help of Gang Xiao) to parse answers containing physical
units :

for instance 5e-3 Wb/s and 5 mV are parsed to the same equivalence
class.

... and to parse chemical equilibrium equations :

for instance "MnO4- + 8 H3O^+ + 5 e- -> Mn^2+ + 12 H2O" is parsed as a 
well-formed chemical equation, which is equilibrated, and the
following TeX string is released as a side-effect :


MnO_{4}^{-}\,+\,8\,H_{3}O^{+}\,+\,5\,e^{-}\,\rightarrow\,Mn^{2+}\,+\,12\,H_{2}O

as another instance, "H2 + O2 -> H2O" is parsed as a well-formed
chemical equation, which is *not* equilibrated, and the following
strings are produced as a side-effect :

H_{2}\,+\,O_{2}\,\rightarrow\,H_{2}O
ERROR H:2,O:2/H:2,O:1

the second line shows that the element oxygen is not conserved.

please see


http://freshmeat.net/appindex/2000/04/18/956061626.html
http://freshmeat.net/appindex/2000/05/02/957277655.html

cheers,			Georges.