Written by Lu Yin

Chemistry can be quite a tricky subject for many students – perhaps they are not interested in it at all, or are afraid of the equations. Education technology has been playing an increasingly significant part in everyday teaching and learning. There are hundreds of apps out there about chemistry, but not all of them succeed at breaking the “image of chemistry being difficult”. Today we are going to talk about two very creative apps, Chemist and Beaker, and see how they can spice up your chemistry teaching and learning.

Chemist

 Would you like a private chemical lab where you can do various kinds of chemical experiment without worrying about explosions, fires or toxic gases? Or is your love for real chemical experiments suffering from your clumsiness? Featured by Apple’s Everything Changes with iPad and rated as “Best Service-based App” by MacWorld, Chemist is the app for you. It makes you feel you are in a real lab. It provides you lots of chemical instruments – you can pour chemicals between beakers or flasks, mix them, pour with burette, or heat with Bunsen burner as you would in real life.

It helps you accurately track mass, temperature, density, and volume of every substance in containers, as the reactions are happening. Tap any chemical reagent to read more information about it.
 It also allows you to use various tools, containers, and chemicals to perform many processes at the same time. You can even let your lab partner hold a thermometer for you while you are mixing chemicals.

Doing chemical experiments on your digital device can not only protect you from dangerous chemical reactions, but avoid costs of chemical materials. Definitely worth a try!

Watch the video here.

Beaker

Want to see what fascinating reactions different chemicals can make within a beaker? You’ve got to try Beaker.

In contrast to Chemist, the only instrument in Beaker is a beaker. Without complex chemical instruments or experimental environments, you are able to focus on the chemicals themselves. With 150 chemicals in the virtual lab, you can see more than 300 different chemical reactions. Start your reaction by shaking your device, or heat it up, cap it, add chemicals or pour them out to experience precipitation, evaporation, diffusion, combustion, explosions etc.

The simple but delicate interface design gives you a textured feel; the liquid stimulation design and sound effects that have been recorded in real labs bring you more intuitive and immersive experience of what is happening in your little beaker.

Live data and chemical equations will pop out just by pressing any chemical (reagent), which is very useful for learning.

 You can even pour mixture between other devices via AirMix™

Beaker can not only help those who have great interest in chemistry or who are learning chemistry, but with a greater aim, enable more people to have a basic understanding of the core of chemistry, so as to eliminate the usual impression of chemistry being dull and complex.

Watch the video here.