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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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Programming languages form the basis of working with molecular structures on a computer. Data structures to represent a chemical structure (such as a connection table or a graph) and algorithms to manipulate them are implemented in a programming language.
The arenas in which we see chemistry having the largest influence are the molecular bases of disease and aging, alternative energy advancement, and the conservation of our elemental resources. The first challenge we identified is often hidden under the guise of an information problem.
Learning computer programming is an invaluable skill for chemists, as it empowers them to do more with collected data and, ultimately, to be more efficient and effective scientists.
Currently, almost every major chemistry related software product has integrated a web based interface using JavaScript.
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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