Chemists traditionally were overwhelmed by the amount of chemistry data and research information published and the lack of coherent access to on-line data. However, the recent linking of all the computers of the world into a vast global information system, "the internet", in particular through the medium of the world wide web, has brought information easily to the chemist's desktop. Using the world wide web access as an tool, information is presented in a user friendly manner. Documents are presented containing not just text, but also images, animations, movies, sounds, databases, and most recently "hyperactive" molecules and virtual reality chemical information. In effect on-line multimedia. Using electronic forms and questionnaires the progress of students can be monitored and the teaching material tailored to their needs. We are interested in using the world wide web as a presentation platform for the teaching of chemistry.
This discussion will focus on development of multimedia content in world wide web documents to supplement and enhance chemistry courseware. The major standard approaches to add chemistry multimedia content are:
Macromedia Director (Shockwave). Shockwave is approaching the defacto standard for multimedia on the web. Shockwave enables developers to build web pages containing interaction with text, video, audio and graphics. Recent announcements that Shockwave will be bundled with Netscape and Microsoft's ActiveX architecture. Powerful chemistry based presentations are easily developed using the user friendly Macromedia Director software.
Apple's QuickTime. Apple's Quicktime and a quicktime plug-in together provide solution for creating multimedia on the Internet. The plug-in enables the playback of high-impact multimedia on the web, bringing interactive performance on to the Internet. Though quicktime has a linear format, chemistry animations bring new life into course material. Apple's QuickTime VR brings another dimension to the visualization of molecules and real experimental envirnoments.
MDL's Chime with Java Scripts. Chemscape Chime is a web multimedia add-on that allows scientists to view chemical information directly on a web page. Chime supports most of the popular structure display formats that scientists. Using a combination of java scripts, chime and web page control, you can build high impact question and answer courseware material.
The combination of these multimedia approaches give a bright future in the construction of a Chemistry Virtual Reality Laboratory. This shall be highlighted in this discussion by following our initial research efforts in this area.