App Profile: Visualizing Organic Chemistry

Visualizing Organic Chemistry is a collection of tools that make learning organic chemistry easier. It’s an excellent resource for instructors and students alike! The app contains over 60 visuals, most incorporating 3D interactive models and animations that help students envision key concepts in organic chemistry.

Visualizing Organic Chemistry includes:

-Orbitals and Bonding-
• Interactive 3D models of basic and hybrid atomic orbitals
• Molecular orbital diagrams with 3D models showing orbital shape and symmetry
• How bond dissociation energy changes with internuclear distance

-Physical Properties-
• Define the most important functional groups with structural drawings and 3D models
• Electronegativity trends and Pauling electronegativities of the elements
• 3D electrostatic potential maps demonstrating charge distribution in molecules
• 3D molecular models demonstrating how molecular size and shape affect surface area and boiling point

-Free Rotation and Conformations-
• Interactive Newman projections demonstrating free rotation with conformational changes reflected in 3D models
• Interactive Newman projections demonstrating torsional and steric strain energies
• 3D models of smaller cycloalkanes with animated changes between important conformations
• 3D models of cyclopropane, cyclobutane, and cyclopentane illustrating several important conformations
• Animated 3D models of cyclohexanes demonstrating conformational inversions (chair flips) and 1,3-diaxial strain
• 3D models illustrating spirocyclic, fused, and bridged bicyclic compounds

-Stereochemistry-
• 3D models illustrating cis/trans isomers of disubstituted rings and alkenes
• 3D models demonstrating chirality and its relation to symmetry
• 3D models depicting the spatial relationships of substituents in both dash-wedge and Fischer projections
• Interactive dash-wedge and Fischer projections demonstrating 3D rotation of substituents in 2D space
• 3D model of a basic polarimeter illustrating the measurement of optical rotation of chiral compounds
• 3D models that demonstrate enantiomeric and diastereomeric relationships in compounds with more than one chiral center

-Spectroscopy-
• Animated, interactive 3D models depicting CH2X2 IR stretching and bending vibrational modes
• IR spectra for several compounds depicting the most important functional group absorptions
• NMR spectra with accompanying 3D models illustrating chemical equivalency and its relationship to symmetry
• Proton and carbon-13 NMR spectra for several compounds depicting several important chemical shift ranges

-Reactions-
• Interactive 3D animation of HX addition showing free energy changes during the reaction
• Interactive 3D animations demonstrating syn/anti stereoselectivity in various electrophilic additions
• Interactive 3D animation of nucleophilic substitutions showing free energy changes during the reaction
• Interactive 3D animations demonstrating inversion and retention of stereochemistry in nucleophilic substitutions
• Interactive 3D animations demonstrating syn/anti stereoselectivity in E1 and E2 eliminations