Ideograms for Physics and Chemistry

Abstract

Ideograms (symbols that represent a word or idea) have great communicative value. They refer to concepts in a simple manner, easing the understanding of related ideas. Moreover, ideograms can simplify the often cumbersome notation used in the fields of Physics and physical Chemistry. Nonetheless only a few ideograms—like ħ and Å—have been defined to date. In this work we propose that the scientific community follows the example of Mathematics—as well as that of oriental languages—and bestows a more important role upon ideograms. To support this thesis we propose ideograms for essential concepts in Physics and Chemistry. They are designed to be intuitive, and their goal is to make equations easier to read and understand. Our symbols are included in a publicly available [InlineEquation not available: see fulltext.]package (svrsymbols).