Information • Textbooks • Media • Resources edited by
JCE WebWare
William F. Coleman Wellesley College Wellesley, MA 02481
Linking JCE WebWare to JCE Articles Over the next few months we will be announcing some new and exciting additions to the scope of JCE WebWare, our online feature that publishes Web-based materials for chemical education. One such addition is providing interactive images available at the JCE WebWare site that are linked to molecular structures or other graphic images of articles printed in this Journal. As an example, a significant fraction of articles in the Journal of Chemical Education include one or more molecular structures—naturally in a two-dimensional representation. We would like to build a collection of interactive Chimebased structures1 for some of these molecules. While many such structures exist in other Web-based collections, having them in one location and linked to a specific article in JCE will greatly benefit both teachers and students. An example of such a collection, derived from a paper in C & E News (1), is at http://jchemed.chem.wisc.edu/JCEWWW/Features/ WebWare/MonthlyMolecules/2002/Jun/. Many students have difficulty “seeing” molecules in three dimensions and linking two-dimensional with threedimensional representations of molecular structures. The more they practice doing so, the more skilled they will become. Additionally, as we try to teach students to draw “form/function” conclusions about molecular behavior, “seeing” the three-dimensional structure is crucial. Structure 1 might appear in a paper on bicyclic systems and the corresponding structure 2 at the JCE WebWare site,
H2 C C H2
W
Randall J. Wildman University of Wisconsin–Madison Madison, WI 53715
which can be rotated, translated, resized, and in which bond lengths, bond angles, and torsion angles may be easily measured. To initiate this program, we invite authors of manuscripts accepted by JCE for publication in print to consider including the appropriate molecular files (.pdb or .mol preferred) with their manuscripts. This is in no way a requirement for publication. If the files are not available, members of the JCE WebWare staff may prepare them, with the author’s permission. Another example of a graphical image from print that might have significant value added on the Web is a diagram of a reaction mechanism represented as an animation on the Web. An example of such an animation may be found at http:/ /www.ncl.ox.ac.uk/quicktime/hydrogenation.html. If an animation would enhance your article, why not submit one? Authors who are interested in participating in this endeavor should contact
[email protected]. Note 1. The Chime plug-in is at http://www.mdlchime.com/chime.
Literature Cited 1. Rouhi, A. M. C & E News, 1999, 77 (43), 38–44.
H2 C H C C H2
CH H2C C H2
1
C H2
Figure 1. Structure 1 is a two-dimensional representation from a structure-drawing program; Structure 2 is a snapshot of an interactive Chime-based structure that has been energy-minimized.
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Journal of Chemical Education • Vol. 79 No. 6 June 2002 • JChemEd.chem.wisc.edu
