Less typing, more thinking!

Category
Good health and well-being
Description

During my undergraduate degree, I have spent countless hours compiling TeX files and writing equations using the Latex syntax. And I would have much rather spent this time thinking about the scientific meaning behind those symbols, rather than how to display them properly.

I believe that having a database with physics equations written in LaTeX will enable me and many other students, teachers and researchers to focus on the important things. An extensive, well-maintained, and open to all bank of equations will be invaluable when writing articles, journals, lecture notes, or presentations.

This project will be useful not only in the current circumstances when experimental work is on hold, and researchers have focused more on articles and presentations, but also in the years to come when online will be the new normal.

Goals of the project

Weekend Goals: design an extensive, extendable, searchable, opened to the public and easily maintained database with physics equations.

Long-term Goals: have a contribution from lecturers, extend to other subjects, integrate with the online LaTeX editor Overleaf.

Skills being sought
  • Enthusiasm and teamwork.
  • Basic knowledge of TeX and LaTex.
  • Programming in Python, knowledge of data structures.
  • Web development in Flask (or similar).
  • Some knowledge of databases will be useful.
References and background material

There exists a nice website [1] https://dlmf.nist.gov/ [1] with some Mathematical formulas, although far from extensive and not too functional.

[2] http://www.equationsheet.com/ [2] provides few physics formulas alongside the mathematical ones but again is far from complete.

Some useful equations can be copied from the source code of Wikipedia, however, due to some latex specific packages, such as `amsmath`, those equations are not always rendered properly. Not to mention that googling for a wiki article, inspecting the source code, copying and pasting it just to have to edit it anyways, is incredibly tedious.

Another project which might have been useful is [3] mathran.org, only if it was not decommissioned in 2017.

Few physics equations can be found on [4] https://equplus.net/ [3]. Unfortunately, this website has not been updated since 2012.

[1] https://dlmf.nist.gov/
[2] 
http://www.equationsheet.com/
[3] 
https://equplus.net/
 

Contacts
kristina.d.kirova@gmail.com