[texhax] Nuclear states of the LaTeX kind

[Gordon Haverland]

On December 29, 2011, Simmie, John wrote:
> It is wrong Gord; the correct nomenclature is
> Upper left 180m, bottom left 73 on the elemental name Ta if you
> want to use the formulaic version but in inline text this is
> correct too "Tantalum-180m"

Thanks John.  I went looking for a "worse" example, and came up 
with

    \ce{^{152m2}Eu^3+}

to put the metastable state on the right, you would need something 
to seperate the numbering of metastable states from the number of 
charges on the ion.

> All of this to describe the 1st metastable isomer of
> tantalum-180 whose half-life unusually is $\approx 10^{15}$ ~
> years

That was why I picked it, all tantalum chemistry is going to 
involve that horribly long lived metastable state.

I have been using the isotope package for my isotope needs, but 
there is scant documentation for it.  Should a person be using 
mlchem instead?

-- 
Gord