■ USE IN TEACHING
One of the reviewers of this manuscript used MolCalc in teaching as part of the review and reports the following:
I found the software to be clear, intuitive, and user-friendly, ...
I also found the software to be a powerful teaching tool providing students with opportunities to: (1) visualize three-dimensional molecular shapes, (2) create their own molecules following simple rules of valence, and (3) explore structure-property relationships in molecules in more interesting and profound interactive ways.
In order to test students reactions, I had students in Physical Chemistry II carry out some lab/simulation exercises in two separate weeks within an introductory unit on molecular quantum mechanics/computational chemistry (see instruc-tional resources in Supporting Information). The students took well to the assignments; they were able to navigate the software with relative ease; and they were impressed with the power and utility of molecular orbital theory as implemented in these programs to answer questions regarding molecular properties. The students realized the limitations of the software imposed by the low level of theory needed to speed the calculations, and yet they were able to learn how compositional and structural parameters affect molecular properties in a relative way and to understand some basic chemical principles on a deeper level.