The Colourful Nuclide Chart

The Colourful Nuclide Chart gives easy access to a wide variety of nuclear properties, and allows you to save high quality chart images for publications, presentations and outreach. To navigate the chart just:

Click and drag to move.
Double click to select.
Scroll to zoom.
Type to zoom to a nuclide.

The Colourful Nuclide Chart displays data from two evaluations, namely

The Ame2016 atomic mass evaluation
Chinese Physics C41, 030002 (2016)

The Nubase2016 evaluation of nuclear properties
Nucl. Phys. 41, 030001 (2016)

These databases are not reproduced in their entirety, and whilst the data displayed should be correct, no guarantee is given as to the accuracy of the presented information. If mistakes are spotted please let me know.

Contact

E-mail: edward [dot] simpson [at] anu [dot] edu [dot] au
Twitter: SuperSubatomic

Update (2020-08-07)

Improved controls for displaying unknown, estimated and out-of-range values. Revised key. Added PDF export.

Update (2020-04-14)

Fixed a performance bug affect Firefox (primarily) due to repeated slow DOM access. Against my better judgement, updated to make Internet Explorer 11 work again.

Update (2019-07-21)

A variety of different fixes and improvements, particularly to the key, plus general performance improvements.

Update (2019-05-30)

Added option for background colours (black to white) and transparency.

Update (2019-04-27)

Minor fixes for data export. Moved to git version.

Update (2019-04-27)

Changed estimated values to display as checked to make clearer. Fixed display of years to avoid scientific notation. Improved use of cookies.

Update (2019-03-10)

Some improvements to the key, functionality improvements, and minor bug fixes. Testing version prompted to stable. Some (generally unused) features have been removed to simplify code.

Update (2019-03-05)

Added display of the current plotted value on the chart. Note that this is just the raw data value, not including any differences.

Update (2019-02-28)

Code cleanup and a significant rewrite on the backend to support future development. Should be a little faster. Also added font support.

Update (2018-11-06)

Switched to outline stable isotopes rather than colour them black. Added plotting of abundances.

Update (2018-07-31)

Fixed bug in half-lives (milli vs micro seconds).

Update (2018-06-21)

Prevent isotope selection when zoomed out on touch devices.

Update (2018-06-14)

Fixed a bug which caused high-precision half lives to be incorrect.

Update (2018-05-27)

Some recent updates include:

  • Updating to the latest AME and NuBase evaluations
  • Added the option to plot undertainties (where available)
  • Added zoom controls
  • Improved plotting of property differences
  • Improved touch device compatability
  • Added precise definition of min/max for colour ranges
  • Added the ability to export to a data table

If you have any feedback or feature suggestions, contact me via e-mail or twitter.

Data Selection

Current property

Select property

Source
Property



N and Z ranges

Zmin Zmax
Nmin Nmax

Colour ranges



Minimum value:
Maximum value:

Quantity to plot

Direction: → ↑ ↗

Single [D1(N,Z)] and double [D2(N,Z)] difference modes for quantity V(N,Z) are defined as follows:

D1 = [V(N+dN,Z+dZ)-V(N-dN,Z-dZ)]/2(dZ2+dN2)1/2
D2 = [V(N+dN,Z+dZ)-2V(N,Z)+V(N-dN,Z-dZ)]/2(dZ2+dN2)1/2

where dN and dZ are 0 or 1 in the case of D1 and 2 in the case of D2. The direction of the difference is set by the radio button. These differences approximate the first and second derivatives of quantity V(N,Z). For some introductory discussions on this see:

E. C. Simpson and M. Shelley
Nuclear cartography: patterns in binding energies and subatomic structure
Physics Education 52, 064002 (2017)

Sharing

Social media

If you like the Colouful Nuclide Chart, please tell your friends and colleagues about it!

Share URL

Want to link to exactly what you see now? Just use the link below:

The Colourful Nuclide Chart

Advanced Display Options

Overlays



Nuclide Colour Options

Colour range:
Saturation:
Lightness:
Hue offset:


This option will colour the nuclides by their decay mode according to the Binding Blocks colouring scheme. It is stronly recommended that you do not use this option unless you know what you're doing!

Background


BlackWhite

Typeface

Font:




Size:

Cookie Reset


Display Options

Labels

Off On Move Always On Always Off



Nuclides

Nuclide Shape: Column Cube Sphere
Height:
Shininess:



Key



Size
Left Right
Top Bottom

Export

Chart Images

Here you can export either the current view or the whole nuclide chart. Both are constrained by the N and Z ranges given on the Data Selection panel. The key is positioned as shown on the Display Options panel. If you need to change the size or position, look there.

PDF Export (vector graphics)

When exporting to a PDF image, there is nothing to do. Just click and enjoy.

PNG Export (raster graphics)

When exporting to a PNG image, you can set a custom size (in pixels) for each nuclide.

Note: The maximum image size is capped in order to prevent browser crashes, but this limit should be sufficiently high for essentially all purposes. Both Firefox and Internet explorer occasionally have problems rendering the whole chart below this cap.

Size:

Data File

Click below to export the current data set to a machine-readable file.

Advanced Options

Custom Colour Points (numeric only)

For more precise control, the mapping between the colour range and the data range can be altered. Below, the first numbers correspond to the point on the define range of colours, and the second number in the text box gives the corresponding fractional point between the minimum and maximum data values.

Troubleshooting


The Colourful Nuclide Chart

Putting the joy back into nuclear data.



Double click on an isotope for more information.