Guidance in naming awkward domain-specific objects?
- by GlenH7
I'm modeling a chemical system, and I'm having problems with naming my objects within an enum.
I'm not sure if I should use:
the atomic formula
the chemical name
an abbreviated chemical name.
For example, sulfuric acid is H2SO4 and hydrochloric acid is HCl.
With those two, I would probably just use the atomic formula as they are reasonably common.
However, I have others like sodium hexafluorosilicate which is Na2SiF6.
In that example, the atomic formula isn't as obvious (to me) but the chemical name is hideously long: myEnum.SodiumHexaFluoroSilicate. I'm not sure how I would be able to safely come up with an abbreviated chemical name that would have a consistent naming pattern.
From a maintenance point of view, which of the options would you prefer to see and why?
Some details from comments on this question:
Audience for the code will be just programmers, not chemists.
I'm using C#, but I think this question is more interesting when ignoring the implementation language
I'm starting with 10 - 20 compounds and would have at most 100 compounds.
The enum is to facilitate common calculations - the equation is the same for all compounds but you insert a property of the compound to complete the equation.
For example, Molar mass (in g/mol) is used when calculating the number of moles from a mass (in grams) of the compound.
Another example of a common calculation is the Ideal Gas Law and its use of the Specific Gas Constant
