Press Release for ChemTube3D - Interactive 3D animations and structures

Jul 2010 - 156,000 visitors from 179 countries in one year

ChemTube3D is a freely available web site based at the University of Liverpool aimed at students, lecturers and practising chemists. It contains interactive 3D animations and structures, with supporting information for some of the most important topics covered during an undergraduate chemistry degree. The five major sections cover Organic Mechanisms, Organic Structure and Bonding, Solid State structures, Polymers and A level topics. It was created by Nick Greeves, one of the authors of the textbook“Organic Chemistry” OUP with Jonathan Clayden, Stuart Warren and Peter Wothers, as a companion resource.

Each page contains some information about the reaction, and an intuitive interactive reaction scheme that controls the display. 3D curly arrows indicate the reaction mechanism and the entire sequence from starting materials via transition state to products is displayed with animated bond-breaking and forming and animated charges and lone pairs. The entire process is under the user’s control in 3D and can be viewed from any angle, unlike those that show a single view. The new resizable window button produces a larger window with a range of control options, which is ideal for projection in lectures, and the molecular photo booth allows a permanent record of any desired view.

At present there are over 100 different animated reaction sequences ranging from simple nucleophilic substitutions (SN2) to Diels-Alder reactions, fragmentations and palladium catalysed catalytic cycles with 30 pages devoted to atomic and molecular orbitals, electrostatic surfaces and vibrations.

ChemTube3D uses the open source viewer Jmol to display the animations so users can interact with the animated 3D structures using the pop-up menu or console using only a web browser. It is ideal for personalised learning and open-ended investigation is possible.

As a result of the JISC supported iChem3D project we have developed a selection of learning designs intended to lead the reader through the opportunities created by the 3D animations. Once this way of working has been learned it can be applied to all the other animations on the site. The entire site is part of the UK Physical Sciences centre Open Educational Resources (OER) project Skills for Scientists.

ChemTube3D had more than 156,000 visitors from 179 countries in the last year. There is a facebook group to raise queries about the chemistry or the site and contributions are welcome.

We will be adding more reactions and more solid structures in the near future.

ChemTube3D was developed at the University of Liverpool by the ChemTube3D team.

We gratefully acknowledge support from the Higher Education Academy UK Physical Sciences centre (AL and SKH) , EPSRC and JISC (KB) and EPSRC Complex Materials Discovery Portfolio Partnership (SKH) and the University of Liverpool.