Hands-on VR Approach to Teach 3D Spatial Concepts of Molecular Reactions

Molecules require a certain relative orientation and proximity to react with each other, a concept that is often difficult for beginners to grasp. We present a virtual reality system designed to help users learn about chemistry reactions with hands-on manipulation and interaction with molecules in a simulated lab environment. Our system emphasizes intuitive molecular interactions over a full molecular dynamics simulation, minimizing erratic molecule motion and sensitivity, in order to help users better understand spatial requirements underlying chemistry reactions. The system uses a novel approach to mapping reagent and product molecules to facilitate reaction detection and animation. We propose to evaluate our system by training a machine learning classifier on motion features (head, hand, and eye) to estimate user understanding of chemistry reactions, thereby enabling adaptive system feedback, such as providing visual hints.