Exploring Chemical Reactions in Virtual Reality

This work presents an immersive molecular simulation tool (Manta) based on virtual reality technology, which enables students to explore "real"molecular structures and chemical reactions on-the-fly. Manta can work as a virtual classroom and even a playground for chemistry education, where students learn the progress of chemical reactions and identify the key impacting factors by interacting with the molecular structures. We conducted class experiments with 16 undergraduate and 18 graduate students on hydrogen combustion reactions to illustrate the educational performance of Manta. Three tasks are designed to learn the roles of temperature and collision characteristics for chemical reactions as well as the elementary reactions in hydrogen combustion. The students' comments showed that the learning experience using Manta was much appreciated compared to the traditional approach. Thus, we believe that Manta could serve as a good tool in chemistry courses and promote students' understanding of macroscopic phenomena from the perspective of molecular motions.