NCSA ChemViz helps high school students visualize chemistry concepts
High school graduates probably remember modeling elements, atoms, and chemical bonds out of foam balls and plastic sticks in their chemistry courses. Today's high school students, however, have a more advanced way of understanding chemistry concepts.
Over the last 12 years, NCSA researchers have worked with high school science teachers in Champaign-Urbana and across the U.S. to develop and refine a computer application that uses computer simulations and visualization tools to help students understand abstract concepts in chemistry. ChemViz allows students to send information for calculation to NCSA supercomputers and within minutes see images—the results of their research and experiments—on their desktop computers.
David Bergandine is a chemistry teacher at the University High School in Urbana and one of the original developers of ChemViz. He talked about the project during a recent presentation at NCSA that was offered remotely over the Access Grid. ChemViz, according to Bergandine, makes chemistry lessons much easier for both the teacher and the student.
"Instead of waving your hands or drawing chalk molecules, you have nice 3D visual models," he said. "We wanted a visual resource for students. We were looking for something that would give us 2D or 3D representations."
Barry Rowe, one of the original developers and a chemistry teacher at Champaign Centennial High School, believes that ChemViz is valuable because it allows students to see things they might not otherwise notice.
Designed to make computational chemistry accessible to high school students and others interested in chemistry concepts, ChemViz is a conglomerate of scientific visualization tools and curricula. The software uses idle cycles from clusters of computers, and keeps a history of previous calculations that have been performed so that results can be retrieved and visualized. Teachers and students access ChemViz through the Web using a free account set up with NCSA. Both laboratory experiments and curricula for teachers and students are available on the ChemViz site. Teacher versions of the labs are password protected.
The project that led to the development of ChemViz began in 1991, through a collaboration among an NCSA research team led by Nora Sabelli and four area high school chemistry teachers: Bergandine, Rowe, Terry Koker, of Champaign Centennial High School, and Robert Miller of Champaign Central High School. After only a few months, an early version of ChemViz was born and the four teachers began to use it in their classrooms. Since 1999 an NCSA research team led by Richard Braatz, Lisa Bievenue (now at the Shodor Education Foundation), and Sudhakar Pamidighantam has developed new 3D visualization capabilities and curriculum materials. Over the years many high school teachers in Illinois and around the U.S. and staff at the Shodor Education Foundation, Indiana Molecular Structures Center, and SRI International have contributed to the development of ChemViz.
ChemViz consists of three tools: Waltz, the Cambridge Structural Database (CSD), and Nanocad. The tools can be used either alone or in conjunction with one another. Waltz is a Web-based interface that allows students to design experiments to answer their questions about electrons, atoms, molecules, chemical bonding, and other concepts. CSD allows students to search for chemical formulas or molecular structures by entering a name, such as ibuprofen or caffeine. The students can then view the chemical structure or formula of their query in 3D through plug-ins and other applications. The last of the three tools, Nanocad, is an interface that allows users to 'draw' a molecule on the screen and can be integrated seamlessly with the other ChemViz tools.
Koker uses ChemViz with his regular-level chemistry students to look at the structure of atoms and to introduce the concept of bonding and with his advanced placement students to learn more complicated concepts. Koker's advanced students recently completed a lab on molecular orbitals, an abstract concept that he said students find difficult to visualize on their own.
"There is no other way to look at molecular orbitals," Koker said. "Here the students are sending off jobs and getting back answers. I'd rather that they use it (ChemViz) and interpret their results than just watch me use an overhead projector."
Koker's students appreciate what the program allows them to do.
"It is a good visual tool. There is stuff that you can't imagine and it helps to see that. When we first went over orbitals, I had no idea what was going on. Seeing it really clarified it for me," said senior Pavel Pourmel.
"It seems more realistic than using a ball and stick like we did last year," said junior Becky Tucker, comparing ChemViz to her previous chemistry course.
"It does millions of calculations in seconds. I'm glad that I don't have to do it," said senior Andrew Mardis. "It is a lot more complicated than what we could do."
Rowe said his students liked that they could see the chemical concepts and processes they were learning about using ChemViz.
"The other way to understand these concepts is drill and kill," Rowe said. "Most students go away with a better understanding of an electron, where they are, bonding, and more."
ChemViz is a work in progress and is always evolving. NCSA, its partners, and its team of science teachers work on improving the program as often as possible. The teachers are still testing the tool in their classrooms, and are able to take information they gain through testing and apply it to improving the program.
The most recent updates have involved editing the laboratory curricula and checking them for accuracy. A standalone version that will run on individual Windows desktop computers will be released later this year.
For more information on ChemViz, see http://chemviz.ncsa.uiuc.edu/.
Access Online | Posted 4-8-2003
| 
