Physical Chemistry II Lab Project by: Andrew Schultz, Cindy Dugan and
Esther Wilcox.
Project Description
Being able to view and display data is important in chemistry fields.
The World Wide Web is becoming an increasing source of information. From
the World Wide Web, software is available which allows the rendering of
molecules. Two of these programs, Chime and Rasmol were used as the basis of
our project. Our goal was to explore these programs and make a user
friendly web page which shows how they are can be used. We found some
uses for these programs such as: the viewing of reactions, conformation
changes in molecules, and vibration of molecules; the displaying of crystal
structures, molecular geometries and protein structures. A couple of
computer programs were written to generate the vibrations and crystal
structures. A description of how to use the programs is given so
that anyone who is interested can use these programs as well.
Also included in the web page is a page of links to other useful
chemistry sites.
These programs can be used by students and teachers. This project shows
the potential for the use of computers and such programs in the classroom.
These programs would make the visualization of chemistry
easier for students.
Future Work
We implemented most everything that we could think of. However, there are
a few possibilities for future work. The program for vibration of
molecules could be changed so that it would work for molecules with more
than three atoms. Also the program for the crystal structures could be
modified to work for non-rectangular unit cells. In addition, these
programs could be added to the web page, so that they could be executed by
the user and the output of the program displayed for them.
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