I am 14 years old and made a chemistry software

[QuantumEngine]

Hello everyone. I am a 14 year old student and am truly fascinated by chemistry.
As I tried various software, they all had a very complicated UI (User Interface) and confused me a lot as a younger student. After searching a lot, I decided to make my own chemistry software. This is the final result after 5 months of work.

What could I add to the software?

Are there any very important things I should work on?

I have a pretty good understanding (I learn everything from internet, I already know the things we learn in class) on how it all works, so just comment everything you can think of!

PS: I am now working on better scaling. I totally forgot that there are things called "atom radii".

Edited by mentor

 

[jedishrfu]

Your software looks very good for a start. One thing we couldn't determine from the video was how it would be used by someone designing a molecule.

Do you just select atoms and then move them to create a molecule? Or does your program have the smarts to figure that out and bond them properly?

Have you looked at other programming systems like processing.org IDE to develop your application?

Lastly, we had to remove the link to steam as it looked a lot like an advertizement and we don't allow that on PF.

 

[DrDu]

Is there a link to the software or video?

 

[jedishrfu]

Is there a link to the software or video?

Yes there was but we had to remove it due to PF rules. Basically it was a video on Steam showing a molecule being self-assembled on screen. We couldn't read any of its menus or really understand how the software assembled the molecule but we wanted to encourage the OP to talk about his project and discover new features that he could add.

Perhaps he could provide screenshots of the software instead uploaded to PF directly.

 

[ogg]

To understand chemistry, two ideas have to be combined: 1. the electronic interactions between atoms (and molecules) and 2. The geometry (3D shape) of the combinations of atoms we call "chemical compounds". I'd expect that a good software program would be able to help a student understand both of those topics. The geometry is more visual in nature, and is straightfoward (but learning about chiral isotopes is less intuitive, imho) to diplay graphically. The electronic stuff is harder, and any "textbook" (paper, electronic, or a program) has to decide on the depth of the treatment. Charge (electrons, protons,(neutrons), nuclei, atoms, ions) is usually first. Then comes the periodic table and the octet rule. While all this is being introduced, mass balance, charge balance of chemical reaction (equations) is being taught. Finally, if a little bit about the violations of the octet rule, polymers, as well as the (organic) chemistry of carbon and proteins and DNA is presented, you'll have a program which is good up to and past the high school level.

 

[Borek]

From the video I am not convinced there were any chemistry in the program - it looked just like a marble playground. Yes, marbles were marked with the element symbols.