ChemViz: Chemistry Visualization and Computation of Molecular Structure

Historically, chemistry educators have tried to render chemical structures and processes more visible through the use of vivid, albeit excessively simple, visual metaphors such as the solar system serving as a model of the structure of an atom. While marginally useful in early stages of learning, such metaphors eventually interfere with students obtaining a deeper understanding of chemical concepts. More recent pedagogical work has suggested that computer-generated three-dimensional animations of certain basic processes, molecular bonding, for example, are capable of providing students with this type of richer visualization. It has been also suggested that such visualizations help students obtain a better grasp of the abstract aspects of chemistry, as opposed to the current practice of focusing on teaching algorithms.