Sunset Lake Software - Comments for "iMoleBuilder"

When was the last time you

When was the last time you saw a fully interactive 3-D display in an organic chemistry book? The small molecules that you deal with in organic chemistry can almost always be described in 2-D drawings, including any 3-D elements. My point is that for rote memorization of these small molecules, you don't need a rotatable 3-D representation, but you can get away with the 2-D representations that you'd find in any textbook. When your professor asks you to draw out a structure on an exam, you'll be doing it on a 2-D sheet of paper anyway.

And yes, since my B.S. was in Chemical Engineering and my M.S. and Ph.D. in Materials Science, I've had every single chemistry course offered as part of these degree programs (organic, physical, analytical, polymer, biochemistry, reaction kinetics, etc.). I'd say I have a pretty solid grounding in the subject matter.

Uuuuh, clearly you have never

Uuuuh, clearly you have never taken organic chemistry. 3-d structure is VERY important to organic chemistry, something you would realize if you took the class.

Well it's a unique little

Well it's a unique little feature I must admit ,

The most practical application I can think for this is that it will be a good practice software for students or those interested in molecular structures , though I must admit I am intrigued on how this feature works.

-Dino Delellis

If you're asking whether

If you're asking whether iMoleBuilder or Molecules can express reaction mechanisms, no they cannot. These applications are meant for 3-D visualization of molecular structures. iMoleBuilder (again, which I'm not the author of) adds the ability to build your own molecules and does a better job with small molecules.

For organic chemistry, you probably won't need 3-D representations of the molecules, and you'll be doing a lot of memorization of 2-D structures and mechanisms. Might I recommend an excellent flash card application by Drew McCormack called Mental Case? The iPhone client seems like just the thing that I could have used back when I was taking organic chemistry.

I'm wondering whether

I'm wondering whether molecules can do mechanisms and other things I'm trying to work out in orgo. Especially going into the second semester.

Yes, 13.00 isn't that much but as a student there are a lot of things that cost money and a limited budget. So I'm figuring I can ask questions here before finding out I've bought a useful program for someone else's application.

:-)

Thanks

Bett