SciFinder indexes millions of documents (from the late 19th century up to last week) that may contain desired physical property information. It's the best index to start this kind of search, but it helps if you first understand the database's scope, structure, and limitations, and learn some handy tips to get better results.
Click on this thumbnail to view a sample record of a bibliographic reference from SciFinder.
[Note: The displays and functions described here are from the previous SciFinder interface, not SciFinder-n, which works quite differently.]
[Note: The displays and functions described here are from the previous SciFinder interface, not SciFinder-n, which works quite differently.]
When you use a chemical name instead of a RN, SciFinder tries to resolve the RN automatically if it can. This can be less precise than using a predetermined RN, but also helpful.
[Note: The displays and functions described here are from the previous SciFinder interface, not SciFinder-n, which works quite differently.]
You can also start a search from the "Explore Substances" option. This search does essentially the same thing as above but with one extra step. First, you search for a substance by Registry Number, molecular formula, name, or structure.
When you've identified the correct substance record, click the Get References link.
The Registry database in SciFinder also contains some experimental and predicted properties for substances (red arrow). Since we're talking about literature searching here, we'll pass over that option.
You'll see a pop-up menu of substance "roles." It's better NOT to select "Properties" here, for two reasons: 1) using it will retrieve only post-1967 references, since the Properties role has not been retrospectively assigned to RNs before that date; and 2) the Properties role is only assigned to RNs where property data are a primary focus of the report, meaning you'll miss documents where useful data are present but are more incidental to the topic.
From the list of references, you can then use the Refine tab to limit the results set using a property name.
When you use this method, "closely associated" proximity is not considered. This makes this method a bit less precise than the References search option shown in the previous tab.
The physicist Y.S. Touloukian (1920-1981) recognized that traditional bibliographic indexes such as Chemical Abstracts did a relatively poor job of helping the researcher locate physical property data buried within the primary literature. He advocated improving the quality of scientific data collection and evaluation and, equally importantly, improving access to that data after the fact. In the 1960s and 70s he undertook a project to identify and adequately index documents that contained property data. The result was the Thermophysical Properties Research Literature Retrieval Guide. The 3rd edition of this work (1982) covered 1900-1980 and indexed over 75,000 source documents and over 44,000 substances. It complements the Thermophysical Properties of Matter series (1970-79) which contains actual evaluated data, and its online successor the TPMD database.
Properties Covered
The term "thermophysical properties" as used by this project signifies macroscopic (bulk) transport and thermodynamic properties, including:
Materials Covered
The bibliography's focus was on solid state materials, especially inorganic, metals, alloys, and composites both natural and manmade: Elements and their compounds; ferrous and nonferrous alloys; mixtures; composites; polymers; refractories; glasses; natural products; minerals; paints and coatings; slags, scales, aggregates, etc. Small organic molecules were not emphasized, since they are widely covered elsewhere. The 3rd edition organized material classes into self-contained volumes:
Arrangement and Use
This tool is almost comically complex. The volumes contain explanations and examples in the prefatory sections and on the end pages. These are the basic search steps:
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