Museums and the Web 2000

When is the next
Museums and the Web?

Archives & Museum Informatics
158 Lee Avenue
Toronto, Ontario
M4E 2P3 Canada

Virtual Museum of Minerals and Molecules

Phillip Barak, University of Wisconsin, USA
Ann Hill Duin, University of Minnesota, USA
Edward Nater, University of Minnesota, USA

http://www.soils.umn.edu/virtual_museum

Session: Demo Session 1

The Virtual Museum of Minerals and Molecules is a website displaying highly interactive 3-D visualizations of the chemical structures and crystallography of molecules and minerals of interest to soil science. Our current collection encoompasses approximately 100 visualizations. By using the Chime(TM) browser plug-in, these visualizations can be rotated, zoomed, and highlighted, and the display can be changed from ball-and-stick models to space-filling models to stick models. Additional instructional materials are included with the models describing the importance and occurrence of each mineral or molecule. Highlighting features allow students to examine individual components of the structures as an aid in understanding the structures.