Chemical Education Today
Reports from Other Journals News from On-Line by Carolyn Sweeney Judd It’s the Table of Contents for this growing, newest type of journal, the Internet, that is a problem. My last commentary on the Internet as journal (J. Chem. Educ. 1996, 73, A195), warned about URLs that change unexpectedly and it happened to one of my favorite sites: the DivCHED page is now at (http://divched.chem.wisc.edu/ DivChed/). By the way, now you can get an on-line copy of the Spring 1996 CHED Newsletter from the DivCHED page. The Table of Contents is a slippery item—changing URLs are only part of the problem. The selection of a web search engine is a factor. A great site for educating yourself about search engines is The all4one Search Machine (http://all4one.com/). A search is done simultaneously on four different search engines. To give you an example, I typed in (“search engine” and tutorial) and got amazingly different results on two of the four searches: AltaVista gave 100,000 hits, but Yahoo returned only 1. Search engine selection should be the first step in building a useful Table of Contents. Have you downloaded Rasmol (http:// klaatu.oit.umass.edu:80/ microbio/rasmol/getras.htm) and/or Chime (http:// Think about www.mdli.com/chemscape/ comparative studies chime/chime.html)? These are keys to the candy store of of molecular molecular structures. Look at structures. Your the links at these sites to get an idea of the larder. Think students can find a about comparative studies of molecule, rotate the molecular structures. Your students can find a molecule, molecule in real rotate the molecule in real time, measure bond time, measure bond lengths with Rasmol, and do some lengths with discovery learning. Rasmol, and do Using the information from a great site is not always some discovery self-evident. Let’s look at the learning. National Cancer Institute database, aptly named for its 127,000 structures (http://www.chem.com/
A304
127,000_3D_structures). Upon entering the page, three frames Why do you read a are presented. The lower right frame lists compounds and journal? To keep CAS#s found in the Drug Infor- abreast of the mation Center NCI database. Enter the CAS# in the top field? search button on the left frame. To stimulate A search by name (in order to retrieve the CAS#) can be done intellectual in the lower part of the left thought? frame. After entering the CAS#, the top right frame changes to To augment your the blue word: Syncon. Click on presentations for the word Syncon to retrieve the line structure. Now click on an your students? empty part of the frame, hold Look to the down the mouse, and a pop-up menu appears. Go to 3D render- Internet for all ing to get the 3D molecule. Hold these reasons. down the mouse again for another pop-up menu, and select “Sticks” under the Display option. Click and hold on the molecule to rotate in real time. The lack of clear directions is not unusual for Internet pages. Nevertheless, this free database is a remarkable site. What is my favorite way to find great information? Go to a great homepage. My latest find is Abby Parrill’s page (http://slater.cem.msu.edu:80/~parrill/). Look at the Integrated Reaction Roadmap. First semester organic reactions are accessible from one large Roadmap. The Reaction Roadmap integrates these reactions visually, hopefully making the connections among reactions easier for students to grasp. This is truly a case where the total is greater than the sum of the parts. Why do you read a journal? To keep abreast of the field? To stimulate intellectual thought? To augment your presentations for your students? Look to the Internet for all these reasons. Wandering through this journal may be frustrating at times, but it is truly worth the trip. Carolyn Sweeney Judd teaches at Houston Community College System, 1300 Holman, Houston, TX 77004; 713-718-6052;
[email protected].
Journal of Chemical Education • Vol. 73 No. 12 December 1996
