Periodic Table Study Guide

Inspiration

Students at MCST complaining about the lack of a single clear and concise database that they could find information about all of the elements on the Periodic Table for their science class. A sophomore, Mahi Gupta told us that she found it difficult and inconvenient to have to refer to the textbook and the Periodic Table for all of her assignments.

What it does

It uses user input to switch between different pieces of information about the different elements to provide relevant information to help the user study the periodic table

How we built it

We built it using a large if block, which has a section for each known element, and contains information on said element. We used a while loop to surround the program so that the user only needs to run it once, and we created a second, smaller while loop at the end for the user to stop the program.

Challenges we ran into

We were unable to use a switch block because of our relative confusion surrounding them, and the fact that we did not know how to add separate parameters to each switch. We also struggled with making our code concise, while still functioning as intended.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

It works properly, and it contains general information about each element, the number of protons, neutrons, and electrons usually contained in each element, and each element's standard atomic mass.

What we learned

We learned much about each element's history, as well as the history of the Periodic Table as a whole. We learned about the different qualities of different elements, as well as when they were discovered. For example, did you know that two elements have been discovered since November of 2016?

What's next for Periodic Table Study Guide

We will work on updating it as new elements are discovered, as well as adding additional information as it's discovered because the newer elements on the Periodic Table have very little information about them. We will also work on adding additional criteria to search for elements by, and smoothing out bugs that occur as we expand the database.

Built With

• java