Lambda alternative?

[mousemeat at gmail.com]

Hello all,

I really like the lambda function for a particular task i have: I am
writing some simulation software, working with many different
materials. Each material with many different properties, some are
temperature dependent, others aren't, some are defined by a function,
some are a lookup table, some are constant. Here is a simplified
version:

class material(object):
    def __init__(self,density):
        self.density=density

airdensity=lambda T:100000/(287*T)
air=material(airdensity)

steeldensity=lambda T:interp(T,[0,1000],[7856,7813])
steel=material(steeldensity)

rockdensity=lambda T:5000
rock=material(rockdensity)

I really like doing things this way, because i can then define other
properties within the class and i can always use the syntax:
specificgravity_at_273K=stone.specificgravity(273), whether
specificgravity is a function or a parameter. (not sure thats the
right nomenclature, but i think you'll know what i mean.)

But, lambda functions can't be pickled. I would like to pickle my
objects, and i would really like to use parallel python (which
requires pickling).

The best way i can see to do that is to make a new class which
inheirits the 'material' class for each physical material i want to
model, but surely i should be creating instances rather than classes.

Is this going to present some new problems that anyone can forsee? Can
anyone think of a better way to do this?  I keep reading that lambda
functions aren't particularly pythonic and that there are always
alternatives, but they seem very elegant to me.

Thanks for your time,

Warren