Links

This page is a collection of internet links that have found interesting, useful, or fun.

Visual

Orbitron – Helps visualize orbitals through plots, wave function, radial distribution functions, etc.  Excellent high-resolution images.

Periodic Tables

Web of Elements – One of the best periodic tables out there.  Click on any element and get lots of relevant information.

Dynamic Periodic Table  – This table is cool because it highlights different aspects of the periodic table.

Whizzy Periodic Table – This table shows electron configurations along with energy levels for each element.

Simulators

PhET (U of Colorado, Boulder) – “PhET provides fun, interactive, research-based simulations of physical phenomena for free. We believe that our research-based approach incorporating findings from prior research and our own testing enables students to make connections between real-life phenomena and the underlying science, deepening their understanding and appreciation of the physical world.”  This site has lots of great simulations for chemistry including black-body radiation, waves, nuclear decay, Beer’s law, etc.  Requires Java, but well supported.

VLAB (U of Oregon) – Collection of interactive simulations for chemistry, physics, and environmental science.  Requires Java and has been buggy and a new interface is under construction.  The development seems to be here.  This spectrum generator was so good.

Tools

Mass Spectrometry & Isotope Pattern & SIS’s generators– Generates mass spectrum with proper relative abundances.  Does not provide fragmentation.

Elemental Composition – Provides mass abundance of each element in a compound.

Reaction Yield Calculator – If you provide the limiting reagent and the product you are interested in, the program will return the percent yield of the reaction.

VSPER Calculator – Determines the VSEPR information for a single center.

Courses

Dr. Richard Spinney (The Ohio State University) – This guy has so much stuff you could probably learn most of general chemistry just from checking out all the links.  Visualization of orbitals, spectroscopy, etc.

Videos

Minute Physics –  Absolutely fantastic videos that summarize important physics and chemistry concepts.

DNA – Cool overview of what DNA is and how it works.

Powers of 10 – A video commissioned by IBM about order of magnitude.  Great for talking about the size of numbers like Avogadro’s Number.

Games/Fun

Puzzle Make by discovery education.  Make a crossword, word search, hidden message, etc.  Very easy to use and great for making something fun to do in class.

Tagxedo – Makes cool images from words in the style below.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Timelines – Chronicles of Higher Education gave a list of good programs to make time lines.  This includes Timeline JS which has some really slick ways of adding content to the timeline.