Teaching molecular geometry is very difficult if you don’t have any visual aids. Pictures will help but it is not enough because your students has to understand that the shapes are three dimensional. Here is a cool interactive 3-Dimensional simulation of molecular geometry that you can download and use as your visual aid.
This simulation can make different models with different number of lone pairs or bonded pairs of electrons.
You can rotate the model in any direction you want and see the three dimensional shape of the molecule.
The software also has several pre-made models of some common molecules with different geometry – from simple linear molecules to octagonal molecules.
In order to run this simulation, you can download it below. Make sure you have JAVA in your computer. If not, you can download it from www.java.com.
Download the Molecular Geometry 3D Interactive Simulation from PhET.
