TheElements
Latest
Touch Press The Elements for Mac -- Entertaining for Everyone
When The Elements for iPad by Touch Press came out in 2010, I was absolutely captivated by the clarity, precision and beauty of the graphics and information. It took a potentially boring topic for most of us -- the periodic table -- and brought it to life in a wonderful presentation that is suitable for everyone. The Elements for Mac is based on the book The Elements, but it is far more than a simple electronic rendering of the book. The engaging text, written by Mathematica co-creator Theodore Gray, covers most of the basics you need to know about each element in a sometimes irreverent style. The Elements for Mac is not a product limited to current students; it is a wonderful resource that delivers an entertaining evening. I recommend it as a holiday gift for anyone that likes gadgets, photography or has a passing interest in scientific topics. When the program opens, you can listen to comedian Tom Lehrer sing his 1959 song also called "The Elements." Alas, it is no longer complete because we only had 102 known elements at that time and now there are 118. For fun, I've included a couple of other periodic table songs at the end of this article under Fun Resources. The Elements for Mac includes impressive photographs by Gray and Nick Mann. Gray's entertaining sense of humor is sprinkled throughout the program, as evidenced in the introduction where he says, "The periodic table is the universal catalog of everything you can drop on your foot." The Elements for Mac expands on the iOS product by adding more than 25 videos that show chemical reactions of a number of elements and uses new fonts. It includes 3D graphics of each element and associated objects that you can rotate, spin and view at any angle. The Elements for Mac also supports the Retina display on a MacBook Pro. You can resize the windows so that you can read everything easily, and a search bar on the main page lets you quickly find elements by name. Generally, the descriptions are easy to understand and the photos include the element and examples of things in which the element exists or is used. Most of the elements include a two-page spread -- sometimes three -- and include a link to additional data furnished by the Wolfram Alpha service. The information provided includes atomic radius and weight, melting and boiling points, density, spectral lines, crystal structure and other interesting facts. Each element includes a sound link for pronunciation too. While you may not need that for lead, it came in handy for dysprosium and mendelevium. For those of you that used the Mac back in the day, The Elements navigation may feel a bit like a HyperCard stack. I tested version 1.01 of The Elements on a MacBook and an iMac, both of which are running OS X 10.8 (Mountain Lion), but the app should work just fine under OS X 10.7 also. The only problem I encountered was when I changed the screen resolution using the Displays system preference. The Elements stopped responding and required a force quit and relaunch to work again. The Elements for Mac is available in 18 Languages. This is a bargain-priced program at US$19.99 in the Mac App Store. I wanted to view all the fun explosions and other videos that are the hallmark of the Mac OS version, but I could not find a complete list inside the program. But, you can watch their minute-plus marketing video below to see a few seconds of each of them. My favorite is the aluminum video. If you want a list of all the elements with videos that I found, leave a comment after the article. Fun Resources Touch Press Blog: A brief History of The Elements, 7/4/2013 The NEW Periodic Table Song, AsapSCIENCE [via Youtube], 5/13. (This is a lot of fun and covers all the elements!) Daniel Radcliffe sings The Elements Song, The Graham Norton Show [via YouTube], 12/11/10. Origin of the Periodic Table, University of Colorado Boulder. "Meet 115, the Newest Element on the Periodic Table," National Geographic, 8/23/13. Why is the Periodic Table Important? Ask.com Related TUAW Stories Daily iPad App: Nova Elements walks you through the periodic table by Kelly Hodgkins (TUAW, 6/13/13) The making of The Elements for iPad by Megan Lavey-Heaton (TUAW, 4/6/10)
The making of The Elements for iPad
Popular Science takes an in-depth look into the makings of The Elements: A Visual Exploration for the iPad, the app that's had many reviewers nearly swooning with giddy geek pleasure. The article is written by the original book's author and Wolfram Research's co-founder, Theodore Gray, who described the experience as the chance to create something that "Harry Potter might check out of Hogwarts' library." The article is a fantastic read and is definitely worth checking out, especially if you have any interest in getting into media publication for the iPad, and how to design dynamic pages that Photoshop nor InDesign simply can't pull off. They took a library of nearly 350,000 images shot for the original book, combined it with a page layout tool constructed from scratch with Mathematica and added a runtime application code to turn those pages (processed on the fastest 8-core Mac Pro out there) into a beautiful iPad book that is truly worthy of Hogwarts. In addition to the Popular Science interview, check out the above video that debuted on Gray's YouTube channel for the book for an additional look at the book.
iPad apps: defining experiences from the first wave
There are now over 1,348 approved apps for the iPad. That's on top of the 150,000 iPad-compatible iPhone programs already available in the App Store. When Apple's tablet PC launches, just hours from now, it will have a software library greater than that of any handheld in history -- not counting the occasional UMPC. That said, the vast majority of even those 1,348 iPad apps are not original. They were designed for the iPhone, a device with a comparatively pokey processor and a tiny screen, and most have just been tweaked slightly, upped in price and given an "HD" suffix -- as if that somehow justified the increased cost. Besides, we've seen the amazing potential programs have on iPhone, Android, Blackberry, Windows Mobile and webOS when given access to a touchscreen, always-on data connection, GPS, cloud storage and WiFi -- but where are the apps that truly define iPad? What will take advantage of its extra headroom, new UI paradigms and multitouch real estate? Caught between netbook and smartphone, what does the iPad do that the iPhone cannot? After spending hours digging through the web and new iPad section of the App Store, we believe we have a number of reasonably compelling answers. Update: Now includes Wormhole Remote, TweetDeck, SkyGrid, Touchgrind HD, GoToMeeting, SplitBrowser, iDisplay, Geometry Wars and Drawing Pad.
