This project will develop and apply new educational technology tools that will guide students' exploration of complex 3D molecular structures and the forces that affect them. Equipped with a set of tools, e.g. virtual probes, students will navigate above, below and through molecules exploring forces among molecules that define structures such as large biopolymers (e.g. DNA or proteins), ionic lattices, liquid crystals, cell membranes, or ligand-receptor complexes. Virtual probes will help students recognize the effects of functional groups on electrostatic properties and characteristics of complex molecular surfaces. The universality of those molecular structures, coupled with the use of a friendly interface, allows for a qualitative introduction to the molecular underpinnings of material science, physics, chemistry and molecular biology appropriate for both high school and college. Using the Molecular Workbench, an open-source modeling and authoring system, the project will create a unique blend of molecular dynamics and 3D environments with teacher-authoring capabilities. A logging system to explore student learning with models will be developed based on Jmol scripts. This will facilitate the study of students' learning from static and dynamic 3D molecular models. A comparison of 2D and 3D molecular models based on the same content will be made. The software for this project will be freely available and potentially have a broad impact on millions of students.
