Cfrtjryk

I'm using the next Mathematica command in order to plot molecules:

ChemicalData["name", "MoleculePlot"]

But I'm not sure if the Mathematica database of molecules is complete.

I'm trying to plot lactic acid.

The problem is that it doesn't seem to exist a name of the molecule that makes the command work

ChemicalData["Lactic acid", "MoleculePlot"]

or

ChemicalData["2-Hydroxypropanoic acid", "MoleculePlot"]

So, I want to know if anyone has any suggestions about what to do in these cases.

I've struggled with How Mathematica expects the end-user to interact with knowledge databases for quite some time. While this solution is likely not universal, it has been reasonably successful for many of my searches.

Using CTRL= to perform a free-form Wolfram Language input followed by using CanonicalName typically provides the appropriate string to conduct additional property searches:

Jason B. notes in the comments that one can obtain the same information programmatically through Interpreter["Chemical"]["lactic acid"]. I've included it in the answer in case the comments get removed in the future.

ChemicalData[!(*

TagBox[

StyleBox[

RowBox[{"Entity", "[", 

RowBox[{""<Chemical>"", ",", ""<MilkAcid>""}], "]"}],

ShowSpecialCharacters->False,

ShowStringCharacters->True,

NumberMarks->True],

FullForm]), "MoleculePlot"]

or

Entity["Chemical", "MilkAcid"];



ChemicalData[%,"MolecularPlot"]