My friend Lee Tremblay sent me a link to a great database of molecules. Since I was going to be on a long train ride today, I saved 62 of the molecule description files on my computer, and figured out how to see them in my little Springy viewer.
The physics isn’t really right, but they are fun to look at and play with. And very colorful. 🙂
You can see for yourself by clicking on the molecule below (which is one of my favorites — see if you can figure out which one it is after playing with the program):
Wow! But I’m having a bit of trouble controlling this—when I click on an atom and drag a bit it goes wild and eventually disappear very fast… maybe I’m not doing something right…
Hmm. It sounds like something that would happen if Java is running much slower on your computer than it does on mine. What computer are you using? And are lots of other things also running?
Of course you were right 🙂 I quit FOUR music programs I was running together and now it works great. I show them to the kids spinning around the molecules and the first thing my 7yr old said was, “How do you make new molecules?” 🙂
So fun! The buckeyball is really cool. Squishy!! If real chemistry was like this we’d all have silly putty bodies:)