Education of Molecular Structures Using Structure-Drawing Software on Personal Computer

For the purpose of understanding chemical structures of body constituents, a task work was assigned to the students to draw structural formulae of several organic compounds on personal computer (PC) using structure-drawing software. Concurrently, students\u27 levels of skill in operating software and understanding of structures have been investigated. The students can generally operate the software. However, it was clarified that they had difficulty in fine control to arrange the whole shape of the formula including bond lengths and angles, size of atom label on ring structure, in addition to setting format of the character such as super- and subscripts to indicate charge or number of atoms. In respect of understanding, they had much difficulty in finding the structures asked, and in distinguishing stereoisomers. Two thirds of the errors observed in submitted task papers were concerned with stereochemistry. Overall, the students felt fun with the structure-drawing software and found it convenient to draw structures, wanted to get skilled, and utilize it for processing papers on laboratory classes. These findings suggest that drawing formulae on PC will be attractive to the students and thus helpful for understanding molecular structures of compounds