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Connected Chemistry, a novel learning environment for teaching chemistry, is appropriate for use in both high school and undergraduate chemistry classrooms. Connected Chemistry comprises several molecular simulations designed to enable instructors to teach chemistry using the perspective of “emergent phenomena”. That is, it allows students to see observed macro-level chemical phenomena, like many other scientific phenomena, as resultant from the interactions of many individual agents on a micro-level. This perspective is especially appropriate to the study of chemistry where the interactions between multitudes of molecules on the atomic level give rise to the macro-level concepts that students study in the classroom. Connected Chemistry comprises molecular simulations embedded in the NetLogo modeling software (1). The collection contains several predesigned simulations of closed chemical systems to teach specific chemistry concepts. Currently, Connected Chemistry contains models for teaching Brønsted–Lowry acid–base theory, enzyme kinetics, radical polymerization, buffer chemistry, kinetics, chemical equilibrium, and crystallization. Instructors and students can individually tailor the predesigned simulations or generate new simulations as they are needed in the context of a particular lesson, classroom, or department. Students’ primary interaction with a Connected Chemistry model occurs in the interface window (see Figure 1). The interface displays explicitly the interaction between the molecular and macroscopic levels of chemistry through a graphics window and a plotting window. The graphics window of each model provides students with a visualization of a simulated chemical system in an isolated environment. The behavior of each simulated molecule in the closed system results from each graphical agent executing, in parallel, the procedural rules that govern its behavior. The graphics window responds in real-time to any alterations that a student might make to the system using a variety of system variables, in the form of sliders and buttons, available in the interface. For instance, each molecule individually responds to changes in temperature or pressure in the system as a student manipulates the values of each variable in the interface. A new molecular animation is not displayed; rather, each molecule adjusts its behavior as it detects changes to the system variables. Through such a design, Connected Chemistry affords students an opportunity to observe how their alterations to the system generate reciprocal effects between the macro-level variables and molecular-level interactions. 
Figure 1. Every Connected Chemistry simulation contains an interface window with a graphics windw, plotting window, and system variables.
Connected Chemistry has many kinds of uses in any chemistry classroom. The accompanying article details three possible applications that have been piloted in high school general chemistry, first as a visualization tool with which instructors can demonstrate abstract concepts to the entire classroom for illustration and discussion; second, as a laboratory simulator to allow students to observe the molecular interactions that they are investigating in the laboratory on the macroscopic level; third, as a feedback tool when studying or problem solving. None of the Connected Chemistry applications described requires any computer programming in the NetLogo modeling language. However, Connected Chemistry includes interface tools that allow more sophistocated users to alter or manipulate a simulation’s procedural rules. This can yield even greater benefits from Connected Chemistry. Literature Cited- Wilensky, U. NetLogo. Center for Connected Learning and Computer Based Modeling, Northwestern Univ.: Evanston, IL. (accessed Jan 2005).
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