A
Spartan-produced image of a phosphorus trichloride slice.A
Spartan-produced image of a phosphorus trichloride slice......Among the more difficult concepts that high school chemistry
students tackle are those dealing with atoms and how they bond. Learning
the difference between predominantly ionic and predominantly covalent bonds,
though, lays the foundation for understanding and predicting many chemical
properties. Visualizing chemical bonding can be made much easier for the
beginning student by taking advantage of chemistry web resources and programs
such as CHIME, RASMOL, and VRML. In addition, there are commercial programs
such as SPARTAN, which give the teacher a powerful teaching tool to help
students "see" molecules in topics such as bonding, polarity, periodic
trends. The 3D rendering of shapes and electron density in introducing
dipoles even outpaces hands-on handling of physical models by showing via
color the high and low electron density regions of molecules.
....."Webbed" teachers have available online a wide range of high-content
web sites on which to draw for visualizing atoms, molecules, and bonding.
Sites range from those appropriate for use with older elementary students
to computation-heavy sites more appropriate for college students. This
page collects links to several visualizing/modeling sites selected for
their potential in helping high school students visualize atoms and the
bonding process.
.....If you maintain or know of a site that would also be a good
teaching resource, kindly email the URL to me (email address at the bottom
of the page).
MATHMOL --K-12 Mathematics
and Molecules..A starting point for modeling, including models of water,
ice, carbon allotropes, hydrocarbons, as well as GIF, PDB, and VRML images
of molecules, including nucleic acids and common pharmaceutical molecules.
Chemistry Visualization...Probably
one of the best sites available to teachers is the Chemistry Visualization
(ChemViz) project housed at the National Center of Supercomputing Applications
(University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign). Teachers may apply to the National
Computing Center to use the Supercomputer for atomic and molecular visualization
projects! The site permits you to generate both stills and movies of selected
atoms bonding. The site also contains curricular materials for teachers
to use in their classrooms with on-line materials! The application is available
through the email address on the page.
Modes de representations
en infographie moleculaire les differentes techniques d'estompage..A
molecular modeling site in French, maintained by Francois Savary, University
of Geneva. An English page link is provided, although it did not work as
this page is written. Two links lead to GIF tables of 48 linked thumbnail
images (in French, but still decipherable for the non-French speaking).
In addition, one link permits downloading of compressed RGB format images.
An
index of Amino Acids...From Berlin, this index of amino acids links
to pages providing the German name and the properties, as well as ball
and stick models.
Chime
home page...from MDL, Chime (the ch is pronounced like _ch_erry) is
available for free download from this page. This plug-in is an invaluable
asset for looking at molecules and rotating them in 3D in several formats.
Unfortunately, Internet Explorer no longer supports this plug in. You must
use Netscape 4.6 or 4.7 (Netscale 6.x will not work).
Protein
Explorer Home page Eric Martz. This is a GREAT program for visualizing
protein molecules. The page has links to a step-by-step tutorial on the
use of the program. It requires Chime and Netscape 4.6 or 4.7. Internet
Explorer no longer supports Chime, so does not support this utility.
FrontDoor to Protein Explorer A quick start tutorial for Protein Explorer.