Programming challenges related to chemistry [closed]

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I'm looking for interesting programming puzzles, problems or challenges suitable for a class of chemistry majors learning C as their first programming language. Do you have any recommendations?

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Project Euler is pretty good. They have some simple challenges that may be suitable.

These won't really do much to teach them C, though. Text books are much better for that.

Additionally, you could have them write a program to balance chemical reaction equations. That would be good for I/O and simple math.

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Given a text file with a whole bunch of pressure/temperature/mole count as input, and using the ideal gas law equation, output the values of the volume for the gases and output the entire set of data (P,V,T and n) into a nicely formatted output file.

Should cover file i/o, basic function usage, and string formatting. Has the potential to cover arrays and stucts as well.

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David, tasks that come to my mind would be:

• calculation of the number/topology of isomers of hydrocarbons (cyclic and acyclic, saturated and unsturated)
• numerical integration of optical spectra (absorption and fluorescence)
• kinetical models
• deconvolution of experimental data
• modelling of thermodynamical cycles and their efficiencies

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This seems a really vague question but assuming I'm a chemistry student that is learning C I would like to write programs that allows me to define molecules and compounds starting from simple elements.

I really don't know how to explain it, but maybe define your struct for a nitrogen atom, one for oxigen atom and have a way to bind it to produce water.. or maybe mixing to different substances too see what will come out programmatically..

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You can try pex4fun. It allows you to learn algorithms in C# (which is close enough to C). pex4fun provides read-to-use classes and also engaging coding duels that turn learning into a game.