In this exercise, we won't worry about radioactive decay. The second source of abundances apply to the earth's crust. Spreadsheets such as Excel offer the facility to do repetitive operations on a large range of figures. For example, we shall want to multiply all of the numbers in one column by those in another, and write the result in a third column. In one case that we shall meet, we have a column of logarithms of numbers, and we will need the antilogs, or the numbers before the logs were taken.
Spreadsheets make such manipulations relatively easy.
They also remember things you have done, so if you make a change in one number, the program will update all other numbers that depend on the changed number. Spreadsheets typically have elaborate plotting facilities, and we will make limited use of them. If you are familiar with ftp, and want to go ahead, please do so. For those unfamiliar with this technique, we outline one way to do it. With Windows2000, you may have to do a search for the Command Prompt using the Search utility from the Start menu.