JavaScript for Chemistry

To assist college chemistry faculty members in learning to use JavaScript to develop and use web-based materials to provide their students a more interactive, self-paced, and visual approach to learning chemistry.

During the past year, I reviewed a number of ways of creating web-based interactive instructional material for general chemistry. I was particularly interested in reprogramming for the web some tutorial materials originally created in the DOS version of TK Solver - those applications used a common core of functions for analysis and calculation. I was impressed with the ease of accomplishing this task with JavaScript - the programming was straightforward; the JavaScript object model, with it's properties and methods, handled the core functions very well; and the JavaScript objects and applications were readily integrated into web pages for user interaction. In addition, there were some very useful guides to learning JavaScript - both online material and books - to assist in gettin started. It was somewhat surprising that few chemists seemed to be using JavaScript and even fewer seemed to recognize the value of JavaScript objects as reusable components.
When I discussed my experience with JavaScript at a Multimedia in Chemistry Workshop (one of a series of Faculty Enhancement Workshops sponsored jointly by the Chemistry Departments of Georgia State University and Georgia Institute of Technology) in September, a number of participants expressed interest and the idea for this workshop developed.

My intent in this workshop is not to redevelop material that is already available - I can direct participants to existing material - but to develop better understanding of the features of the language - particularly objects - and to show how to use these in creating exercises and tutorials for chemistry topics.
The plan is to post weekly exercises and encourage participants to work at the same pace so that they can share questions, insights, and resulting applications. On the other hand, someone who falls behind or someone who starts later can progress through the material at their own rate (if I am diligent and post new material fast enough, some may be able to press ahead at a faster pace).

Send Questions and Comments to:Aaron Bertrand