The Arts and Sciences Computing Center was readied last summer with dozens of Macintosh and personal computers. In addition, students who own computers were able to connect to the Internet from their residence hall rooms for a small fee. And the Chemistry Computing Facility, located on the fourth floor of McMillen Laboratory, was stocked with Macintosh computers and was staffed by teaching assistants five hours daily. Course information and some lessons now can be accessed through the chemistry department's World Wide Web home page. Undergraduate courses have home pages within the departmental one.
Students can contact their professors and teaching assistants via electronic-mail.
Help-session hours for students regularly are posted on the home pages. Beyond information, the Internet provides chemistry students with Quick Time movies and 3-D visualization exercises that make chemistry more accessible and realistic, if not fascinating. Quick Time movies are computerized demonstrations of orbitals and molecules in three dimensions. The orbitals and molecules are rotated so students can visualize the actual structures. The shapes of the orbitals show how atoms combine to form molecules.