Chemical Exploration with Virtual Reality in Organic Teaching Laboratories

While virtual reality (VR) is emerging as an interactive tool for chemical education, its application and assessment for chemical education are still limited. Thus, an educational VR activity based on interactive molecular dynamics in virtual reality (iMD-VR), which allows for real-time, immersive interactions with a dynamic molecular world, was now designed and executed to demonstrate chemical concepts and engage students in exploring molecular structures, motions, and interactions. There were 70 students in the first semester of an introductory organic chemistry course asked to complete an example task to pull a methane molecule through a carbon nanotube with iMD-VR software originally designed for research purposes by Glowacki and co-workers. Our assessments of this activity have shown valuable motivational impacts and measurable learning gains. The VR activity can be further tailored to many different levels by varying the topics and tasks, with affordable hardware and software.