Mechanisms - Organic Chemistry

What is the app?

• The app is an interactive way of understanding basic organic molecules (i.e. can show how many hydrogen atoms are in a pi system on each specific carbon or can show that the oxygen of water has lone pairs where they are and how they affect the shape of the molecule).
• We can interactively build molecules by pressing an atom showing its available electrons and dragging it towards a H+ atom creating a new bond.
• Shows that if you remove an electron from an atom it will become + and if you give an atom an electron it will become negative. 
• You are scored between 1 and 3 on how you perform in a specific activity which provides useful information learning what your weaknesses and strengths are for organic chemistry.

The apps main objective is to aid customers understanding for organic chemistry overall gives a really basic understanding to organic chemistry and is a very good interactive learning tool and helps you visualise molecules. The app completes its overall objective fairly well however the chemistry involved in the completely free version is very basic and for high school level giving the “essentials”, the apps “in-app purchases” however contains a more complex understanding (more first year university level) containing substitution and elimination reactions, oxygen functional groups and pi systems.

The app is very smooth and extremely well optimised. It is vibrant and colourful and found no problems of lagging or anything else regarding how well it runs. It requires 132.4 MB of data, which is rather large, and requires IOS 9.0 or later. It is compatible with iPhone, iPad and iPod touch and also available on android.

The app itself is free however has in-app purchases requiring you to pay for 75% of the apps levels.
I encountered no problems while using the app, the only negative side is the amount of information inaccessible to a ‘free’ user. The interface of showing atoms and linking them together with its electrons is rather unique, by pressing on the specific atom shows you specific information which aids you in understanding how these molecules actually interact.

Rating of 4.5/5, only downside is in-app purchases.

Customer reviews 5/5 however only one review.

The app I think could be very useful for students in high school to give them a basic understanding of molecules and organic chemistry, however for university level and above, students might not find it as useful however some might enjoy the interactivity of the app. The app is very appealing to the eye and runs exceptionally well.

Hope you enjoyed this part of the blog and download the app if you are interested.

Many thanks from team ARCS.

@ARCSStrathclyde