Sofia Di Mauro remembers high school chemistry being a bit confusing. She couldn’t quite picture how the electrons circulated around in each atom. And many of her first-year University of Miami chemistry classmates were in the same boat.
But thanks to a new application envisioned by her chemistry professor, Marc Knecht, Di Mauro and some classmates were recently able to examine 3D atoms magnified in front of their eyes, using virtual reality headsets. Di Mauro could even inspect the different petal-like orbitals—or likely paths of the electrons spinning around the nucleus—for all the elements in the periodic table.
“Now I can see how all of the orbitals layer on top of each other,” she said, intrigued by the new tool.
The app—called Mixed Reality Atomic Chemical Structures—helped them to fully appreciate the mechanics of chemistry.
“When you see atoms of elements on slides in class or in a textbook, it’s hard to see what’s really going on,” said Allison Boler, a first-year biology major. “But when you have these 3D atoms, and you can compare different elements going down the periodic table, it is very helpful and makes sense why they organize the table this way.”
Isabella Lopez-Merlos agreed.
“You can look up pictures of elements online, but seeing it like this really helps a lot and gives you a better idea of what’s going on in each atom,” added Lopez-Merlos, a first-year student majoring in microbiology and immunology.
Developed by a student team at the University’s Virtual Experiences Simulation Lab (VESL), some of Knecht’s chemistry students were the first to pilot the app. It’s a project that Knecht and the VESL have been working on for more than a year.
The idea came to him while Knecht was reflecting on his teaching one day and thinking about how the new technology could bolster his courses. While Knecht has been teaching college chemistry for 18 years, he noticed that his students often struggle to completely grasp the structure of atoms and molecules.
“Students often have a hard time conceptualizing when things are incredibly small and incredibly large, and that’s what we deal with in chemistry,” said Knecht, who is also the chair of the Department of Chemistry in the College of Arts and Sciences and a Cooper Fellow. “Very small things like atoms and subatomic structures and how the components of atoms interact with one another in what are called orbitals.”
Once he realized the possibilities of creating atoms in virtual and augmented reality, Knecht applied for a Faculty XR Award. Soon, students and staff at the VESL began developing Mixed Reality Atomic Chemical Structures.
To use the app, students must don a VR or AR headset like the Meta Quest. In the virtual reality version, they are teleported into a lab where the periodic table is suspended on the wall, and students can grab an atom of any element. But they can also see the periodic table suspended in their own actual surroundings in the augmented reality version, where virtual objects are layered on top of the actual world. In either version, users can grab atoms of any element and manipulate them, giving students the ability to compare and contrast different elements.
Although the first version is now operational, Knecht would like to build on it so the app can support multiple users at once. Then, he could use it in large general chemistry classes to discuss a particular atom with a lecture hall full of students. He also thinks it could help to model chemical reactivity and binding potentials between elements and compounds. These are concepts that students typically do in class through computational assignments, yet the app would allow them to see it visually.
“This is one way that mixed reality can be a very powerful tool,” Knecht added. “There’s something to be said about being able to touch, see, and feel things in 3D that 2D really doesn’t capture.”
Regardless, Knecht sees the current app as a tool that could help instructors in both high school and college chemistry courses to illuminate atomic structure.
“They weren’t chemists going into it, but the students in the VESL did a fantastic job of understanding complex chemistry to help users visualize what is happening at the atomic level,” he said. “Once the system is really, truly ready, we plan to roll it out to any introductory-level chemistry course. We can see this being used at the college level, but also at the high school level for them to really interact with this material.”
Students and staff at the VESL were energized to see the students’ reactions to the pilot.
“A lot of us have experiences with chemistry textbooks that didn’t go well. So having this physical experience helps,” said Bryson Rudolph, a senior research software engineer, who guided the team developing the app.
Knecht looks forward to using it more this semester and hopefully sharing it with other colleagues too.
“I really hope that students get a stronger conceptual understanding of what atomic structure is and how those orbitals grow as the atomic structure gets larger as well,” he said.
