Chemistry Freeware Links

On this page I post reviews and links to freeware chemistry programs available for download at other sites around the internet. All of the programs are ones that I have used, or currently use. None-the-less, I take no responsiblity for any problems you might experience as a result of installing any of these applications. Unless otherwise noted, the programs are for Windows systems.

ACD/ChemSketch 12 Freeware. ACD continues to release updates to the outstanding Chemsketch freeware. Chemsketch is an all-purpose chemical drawing and graphics software. Use templates or free-hand. Click and draw molecules, ions, stereobonds, text, polygons, arrows, lab aparatus, etc. Automatic calculation of MW and formula. See estimates of density, refractive index, molar volume, etc. ACDLabs also offers free downloads on several useful utilities and template packages that extend the usefulness of ChemSketch.

MolView.Org is a web-based molecular viewing and modeling tool. Because it is built around Javascript, it will run in any modern browser. It runs beautifully on my students' Chromebooks, which is why it has become my preferred tool for introducing students to molecular modeling. In addition, it has other linked information such as IR and Mass spectroscopy. The author of the site is constantly making improvements and adding features.

Discovery Studio Visualizer 4. For those of you who remember WebLab Viewer, this is the updated version of that software from Accelrys. It includes a powerful molecular graphics viewer with superb rendering. An additional benefit is that graphics can be embedded in presentations such as Powerpoint using Object Linking and Embedding (OLE). You must complete a survey prior to downloading the software from Accelrys.

ChemAxon produces a wide range of Java-based chemistry tools, and they offer free academic licenses (you must register with them). While many of the tools would be most useful at the university level, there are several sketch and visualization tools that would be quite useful at the high school level as well. Their "Marvin" applets include Sketch and Visualization tools which may be used freely on non-commercial websites. Because these are written in Java, they run on almost any platform, and the applets run within most browsers.

The Virtual Laboratory from the ChemCollective is a personal favorite. They have an HTML5 version of the virtual lab, so it will now work on tablets and Chromebooks. If you poke around, you can still find the Java version available for download, but why? The online software allows a student or instructor to simulate many lab activities. Acid base titration, buffer chemistry, limiting reactant stoichiometry and solution equilibria are but a few of the simulations that are possible with this software.

KnowItAll Academic Edition - In a continued commitment to academia, Bio-Rad is offering this completely FREE and fully functional software package to promote learning and research in the academic community. With the Academic Edition of KnowItAll, you can have it all and know it all for free-draw structures, perform IR and Raman functional group analysis, and generate high-quality reports. And best of all, this set of tools resides in one common interface, so it's easy to learn and easy to transfer data from application to application.

Avogadro is an advanced molecule editor and visualizer designed for cross-platform use in computational chemistry, molecular modeling, bioinformatics, materials science, and related areas. It offers flexible high quality rendering and a powerful plugin architecture. The software works in Windows, Linux, and Mac OS X and all source code is available under the GNU GPL.

Orbital Viewer is a program for drawing orbitals. This has many features, and comes in both a Windows version and a command-line interface version. Draw any atom, any molecule, create animations, do cutaways, show the locations where the probability goes to zero. Light the orbital from any location, cast shadows, and save files in TIFF, PPM, BMP, AVI, and VRML formats.

The Chemical Thesaurus is a web-based relational database that stores information about many chemical processes: radiochemistry, phase change, resonance structure interconversion, interchanging conformation, single electron transfer, complexation, substitution-displacement-transfer (which are mechanistically equivalent), redox reactions, photochemistry, rearrangements, multi-step mechanisms, synthetic pathways, simple (non-feedback controlled) biosynthetic pathways, etc., etc., etc. The application software is extensively hyper-linked. Just click around, explore, discover.

Chemistry Problems 1.0 exploits advanced numerical methods to generate instantaneously and continuously new situations and data to be inserted in numerous problems related to the various topics that are traditionally part of a basic Chemistry course. In each case, the software also calculates the corresponding solutions and shows them when prompted. Problems and solutions can be printed to pre-formatted text files, allowing to prepare personalized problem lists of any length and complexity. Various difficulty Levels can be selected, from the Basic Level (corresponding to the base preparation required for beginners) to the Excellent Level (a student capable of solving all problems of this level in various versions is certainly very well trained). When a level has been selected, the software shows only problems of difficulty lower or equal to that of the chosen level. The level can be changed at any moment. Topics covered are: Basics; Elements and Compounds; Stoichiometry; Gases, Solids and Liquids; Solutions; Thermodynamics and Kinetics; Chemical Equilibrium; Electrochemistry. The software features a number of useful Tools, such as an advanced Calculator, a Plotting tool, a Balancer of chemical reactions and a Visualizer of simple molecular structures. It also includes some Simulations of idealized laboratory experiments and a few Games, devised in such a way to help fixing in mind the fundamental concepts of Chemistry while also verifying the reached learning level.

SimChemistry for Windows allows you to set up, run and interactively modify simulations on your PC representing microscopic physical systems. You can play existing demo simulations (including those supplied) to learn about the molecular-level behaviour behind macroscopic chemical phenomena, or record your own to show others. You may introduce any number of types of molecules, with their own masses, radii and colours, and specify how each pair of types of molecule should interact -- be it through hard billiard-ball type collisions or through attractive Lennard-Jones interactions with user-settable parameters. Observe the behaviour of solids, liquids, gases, and mixtures; apply pressure with moving pistons and measure quantities with monitor regions. Add annotations anywhere to explain the action on screen. Plot XY graphs of changing quantities, and modify parameters via on-screen controls.

Sicyon is a software tool for everybody using physical or chemical formulas and tables of constants - students or professors; physicists or chemists; scientists or engineers. It is easy-to-use and has everything you need when you calculate or analyze your formula. Sicyon is all-in-one type of software consisting of an expression calculator, constants database, units converter, and solver. A superb program that requires only 1.5 megs of your hard drive.