Chemical Education Digital Library (ChemEd DL): Collections

Explore and Learn about Chemistry

The Chemical Education Digital Library consists of collections of digital materials intended for teaching and learning chemistry. Our collections include:

ChemInfo: a collection of data useful for teachers and students of chemistry.
DigiDemos: chemical demonstrations online with discussion forums.
Data-Driven Exercises: activities in which students are presented with real-world data, and guided to analyze the data according to a quantitative model.
Featured Molecules: molecular models that can be manipulated in 3-D and are linked to JCE articles.
Learning Communities Online: materials suitable for initiating online communities of students and teachers.
Living Textbooks: online textbooks, currently in physical and general chemistry.
QBank: test, homework, ConcepTest, and conceptual questions in chemistry.
SymMath: lessons that use symbolic mathematics engines to relieve computational burdens and encourage conceptual understanding of chemistry.
WebWare: useful Web-based simulations, animations, and other interactive materials that can be used by students, teachers, or both.
Biographical Snapshots: information about women and minority chemists who have made important contributions.
Molecules 360: a collection of 3D, interactive molecular models of simple molecules presented using Jmol.
Concept Maps: a collection of graphic illustrations of the connections among chemical concepts.
JCE Online: serves as a means of distributing digital materials that supplement the articles in the printed Journal of Chemical Education. It also provides a medium for the publication of materials that cannot be presented well or at all in print.
Chemistry Comes Alive!: an award-winning collection of high-quality QuickTime video clips and still images that bring chemistry to life withdepictions of chemical reactions and techniques. CCA! video and imagery is readily incorprated into other presentation formats such as Web pages and presentations.
Periodic Table Live!: a periodic table with access to data and descriptions of the elements. It uses images and video from the Chemistry Comes Alive! collection to bring the periodic table alive with high-quality depictions of reactions of the elements, along with the JMol chemical structure viewer which provides an interactive, 3D display of the the crystal structures of the elements.
What's This?: Interesting images of chemistry in action that ask the question What's This? An answer a chemist might have to to the question is provided by a video and short description.
Today's Science for Tomorrow's Scientists: lessons linking the science done by specific research groups with middle and high school curricula.

In addition, the ChemEd DL provides many opportunities to connect with a variety of communities interested in the promotion of the life-long learning and teaching of chemistry.

If you have any recommendations for future collection offerings please contact us.

ChemEd DL Collections

Resources at ChemEd DL are grouped into collections. Collections for different areas of chemistry (general, organic, physical), for various educational levels (K–12, higher education), for educational settings (laboratory, lecture classroom), and several others exist at ChemEd DL. We welcome additional collections and you are encouraged to suggest or even curate other chemistry collections.

Periodic Table Live!

The periodic table is one of the central organizational tools of chemistry. It is one of the most recognizable icons in all of science. The Web has several periodic table sites, probably the best known being Web Elements.

Periodic Table Live! (PTL!) helps bring the periodic table alive through its use of images, video, and 3D interactives. It has much of the data that the other periodic tables have and also provides interactive tools for charting and sorting the data.

It is because of these unique features that Periodic Table Live! is one of the featured collections of ChemEd DL. But we also have plans for PTL! at ChemEd DL. Through the use of ChemEd Collaborative, the ChemEd DL wiki, we invite you to participate in the future development of PTL! As articles about the elements in the ChemEd Collaborative are revised and developed, they will be reflected back into PTL, thus continually breathing new life into Periodic Table Live! Join us in building an exemplary periodic table for learning about the central organizational tool of the central science.

What's This?

Chemistry attempts to make sense of the world around us by providing answers to questions about the make up and interactions of our surroundings. Many curious phenomena occur in nature and in the laboratory.

ChemEd DL's What's This? collection presents a curious, thought-provoking image and asks the question "what is going on here?" The answer is provided through the use of video and an explanation from a chemist's view.