Do-It-Yourself: 3D Models of Hydrogenic Orbitals through 3D Printing
-
-
[1] High Point University
High Point University
Township of High Point, Estados Unidos
-
- Localización: Journal of chemical education, ISSN 0021-9584, Vol. 93, Nº 9, 2016, págs. 1586-1590
- Idioma: inglés
- Texto completo no disponible (Saber más ...)
-
Resumen
Introductory chemistry students often have difficulty visualizing the 3-dimensional shapes of the hydrogenic electron orbitals without the aid of physical 3D models. Unfortunately, commercially available models can be quite expensive. 3D printing offers a solution for producing models of hydrogenic orbitals. 3D printing technology is widely available, and the cost of 3D printing “inks” is relatively low. Creation of models requires graphing electron orbital probability distributions in spherical coordinates and exporting as stereolithography (.stl) files (a common format for 3D printing). There is both freeware (CalcPlot3D), and license-requiring (Matlab, Mathematica, Maple) software capable of plotting orbital equations and exporting in the required format. The process of creating the orbitals is relatively simple, and the 3D printing methodology is cost-effective.
