Digital resources for teaching chemistry

Useful digital resources for teaching chemistry

This is a list of useful digital resources for teaching chemistry. A number of these include large collections of material that can complement instructor-led learning.

University of Liverpool ChemTube3D: http://www.chemtube3d.com/

  • Large collection of visualisations of organic reactions, inorganic structures, chemical structures, visualisations of bonding, polymers etc. Including Jmol interactivity and animations.

Merlot: http://www.merlot.org/merlot/index.htm

  • Very large database/community of visualisations and related teaching tools in chemistry education. Rated by members of the community.

PhET Chemistry, University of Colorado: http://phet.colorado.edu/  

  • Collection of interactive animations for teaching various concepts science. Spanning K-12 and first-year undergraduate (note: biochemistry animations are found under the Biology collection)

Wolfram Demonstration Project: http://demonstrations.wolfram.com/

  • Large, multidisciplinary, user-contributed interactive animations/ visualisations covering a wide range of topics in maths, science and engineering. Particular focus on university level.

Molecular workbench: http://mw.concord.org/modeler/index.html, http://mw.concord.org/modeler/showcase/chemistry.html

  • Molecular dynamics simulations of chemical, physical and biological processes. Interactive manipulation of parameters allowing students to see what happens when they change different conditions. Some Java-based, some HTLM5.

ChemCollective: http://chemcollective.org/

  • Online resources for teaching and learning chemistry. Specifically developed for chemical education, covering specific topics that students find difficult. Also collections of concept tests, problems and tutorials.

Virtual Inorganic Pedagogical Electronic Resource (VIPER): https://www.ionicviper.org/

  • Large collection of teaching resources and materials (lecture notes, visualisations etc) specifically aimed at teaching inorganic chemistry.

VR Molecule Pro: http://benhur.teluq.uquebec.ca/~mcouture/Fodar99/Hzdemo_EN.htm

  • Interactive simulation of molecule vibration and rotation modes for a selection of small molecules. The user is able to change various parameters to see their effects on ro-vibrational behaviour.

Webspectra: http://www.chem.ucla.edu/~webspectra/

  • Problems in NMR and IR spectroscopy. Some instructional material and a collection of spectra for identification of unknowns, graded in difficult (with answers). Also links to other sites related to spectroscopic identification of unkonwns.

Orbital viewer: http://www.orbitals.com/orb/ov.htm

  • Program for visualising and exploring atomic orbitals. Allows for different representations, view angles, cutaways, creation of animations, export to different file formats

Webpage last updated: 2020-03-20
Content: Felix Ho

Last modified: 2021-11-17
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