The Molecular Workbench (MW) software offers interactive, visual simulations that have been widely used to teach science (watch a movie about it). As a free, open-source and extensible modeling platform, it provides not only a powerful environment for creating interactive simulations (including molecular simulations, mechanical simulations and discrete-element simulations), but also an easy-to-use authoring tool for building user interfaces and writing guided activities. In addition, it is equipped with a report and assessment system for collecting data and measuring learning with models and simulations. All these functionalities are seamlessly integrated under a simple user interface, which makes the sum of many difficult tasks orders of magnitude easier than they used to be for educators. For more information, see Molecular Dynamics for Everyone. You can also find some existing activities at the Molecular Literacy Database.
Please click the button below to launch or download MW (Java 1.5+ is required -- get it here!):
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If the above button does not launch MW (fix it),
click the button below to download mw.jar: (Please note that the downloaded file must have the name exactly as "mw.jar") |
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Java 1.5 is also known as Java Standard Edition 5.0. Mac OS X users: If you are using Mac OS X 10.3 or older, you can only run an older version: MW V1.3. |
NOTE: Although Java is pre-installed on most computers nowadays, for Windows and Linux users, you may need to go to java.com to have your Java software automatically updated or installed. All Mac OS X computers have Java and you can update it from the "Software Update ..." item in the menu under the Apple Logo in the screen menu bar.
If you are so unlucky that neither of the above works, or your Internet connection is not great, or your firewall is blocking, or you simply prefer the traditional way of getting software, please follow these instructions to download an offline version that needs no Internet connection at all to use. Note that, however, this version cannot be used to collect student data and does not have access to the latest simulations. For Russian users, there is a customized Russian version (Windows only) that can be downloaded here.
The development of this program is funded by the National Science Foundation. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in the materials associated with this program are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.
Three-dimensional rendering is powered by the Jmol Graphics Library developed by the Jmol Development Team. Mathematical expression evaluation is powered by the JEP Parser developed by Singular Systems.