SCIENCE AND VISUALIZATION

MathMol Brings 3D to the Classroom

Marvin Rich

[Ed: Links to web pages and/or e-mail addresses which have become inactive since the publication of this article have been enclosed in curly brackets { }. Replacement links have been provided where possible.]

Project MathMol (http://www.nyu.edu/pages/mathmol) is an interactive Internet site aimed at introducing elementary and high-school students to the world of molecular modeling and its relationship to mathematics. Using resources at the ACF Scientific Visualization Center, we've been working on the site since December 1994 (see Connect, Summer 1995). The site presently receives well over 2000 hits a month to its various components.

This summer, two NYU students have been working in the Scientific Visualization Center making new additions to the MathMol site, in order to better assist the K-12 community, as well as college-level students. The students involved are Mark Gu Chen (Computer Science) and Sheila Estacio (CAS).

We've been working to develop materials that can be delivered across the Internet; the work has involvd efforts in two main areas: the first is a hypermedia textbook; the second is a library of three-dimensional molecular structures that can be used to complement study with traditional classrooms and textbooks.

What Is a Hypermedia Textbook?

A hypermedia textbook is an integrated set of Web pages and links that are similar in many ways to a regular textbook. However, it has several distinct advantages --

It can make use of animations and sound, and even 3D interactive images through VRML (virtual reality modeling language).
It can be linked to numerous additional resources via hypertext links.
It can contain interactive experiments making use of Javascripts that are embedded within the HTML source code.
It can be kept up to date with current information.

Being up to date is a major problem in primary and secondary education, especially in an urban school system where most textbooks are outdated. It will now be possible to update textbooks, whether to add new information, or to change the content to meet the needs of varied populations of students.

The hypermedia textbook can be reached this September via the MathMol home page or directly at http://www.nyu.edu/pages/mathmol/textbook/ .

Library of 3D Molecular Structures

In addition to creating the hypermedia textbook, we have been updating and expanding the Library of Molecular Structures at http://www.nyu.edu/pages/mathmol/library/library.html . This site, too, has been active since 1994, and has been getting about 1000 visitors a month. It contains perhaps 100 molecular structures that can be viewed interactively in 3D, using either VRML or RASMol (public-domain software for Mac, PC, or Unix systems).

The mathematical coordinates for many of the structures were produced through x-ray crystallography at various laboratories, and are available in the literature and on public databases. Others have been assembled from smaller components using software such as Insight II, available at the Science Visualization Center.

Three-dimensional molecular images can be produced by a variety of software packages; in all cases, the package has to be given specific data about the location and type of each atom involved. What we've done here is to create the appropriate data files, making the images available to the public in a variety of formats.

These structures will be helpful not just to the K-12 community but also to undergraduates studying the sciences. [ C ]

Dr. Rich is Visiting in the Department of Biology and the NYU teacher liason for the New York Collaborative for Excellence in Teacher Preparation in Math and Science.
{richm@nyu.edu} Replacement address: mr23@nyu.edu

Posted 24 September 1996. Last reviewed 30 November 2005.