MakeAtom

Inspiration

We were inspired by our experiences with chemistry, and our struggles to memorize elements and their properties. Our project can function as both a memorization and reference tool.

What it does

Our project takes user input of protons, neutrons, and electrons and draws an atom based on those inputs. Currently, it can only make the first 6 elements, but in theory it will be able to make all elements, isotopes, and ions.

How we built it

We built our project using React and Typescript. We split our webpage into a section for user input, and a section for the drawn output, then coded each one in isolation, transferring the values when needed.

Challenges we ran into

As freshman computer scientists in our first hackathon, we ran into a few challenges. Most obviously, we did not properly plan for the beginning, and spent four hours working on a dead-end project before pivoting to a workable idea. Additionally, our project uses react, a language which only our most experienced coder knows. None of the languages which we shared were enough to make what we imagined, so the other two coders were learning the language during the hackathon.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We are proud to have submitted this, and to have made it through our first hackathon.

What we learned

We learned how to use Git as a group, how to code in react, and how to pick a good idea. We expect this knowledge to continue to be useful going forward.

What's next for MakeAtom

We expect to complete the element list for MakeAtom, as well to refine it for more customizability. There is an idea of overhauling it into a much bigger MakeMolocule, taking the atoms and putting them together, but that may be saved for next hackathon. With or without MakeAtom, this group intends to continue coding together in the future.

Built With

• react
• typescript