I would like to draw your attention to a breakthrough in chemistry modeling. There are exceptional 3D chemistry models that are currently produced through Virtual Reality Modeling Language (VRML). The site features a VRML search engine that contains many beautiful representations of molecular and membrane structure at: http://vrml.sgi.com Go To: Once the site has loaded, there will be an blank entry field at the top of the homepage that has a Dive In button next to it. Enter the word chemistry in the field and click on the Dive In button. This will load an index of the "VRML worlds" which depict chemistry models. It is necessary to download a VRML browser to view these models. It is a simple and free download from the same page. *Here are a few quotes from an article entitled "VRML, Chemistry and the Web- A New Reality" by Alan J. Robinson of the Molecular Modeling Group, Department of Physical and Theoretical Chemistry, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK. "This article is an attempt firstly to introduce the concept of VRML which brings 3-D virtual reality to the Internet, secondly to describe how straightforward it is to use it and thirdly how we are now applying it to our research in chemistry to analyse and report results." "But why should chemists (and other scientists) be interested in VRML? Already as chemists we are used to dealing with VR programs such as QUANTA (Ref. 12), Sybyl (Ref. 13) and RasMol (Ref. 9) that display chemical structures and most will agree that these programs are beneficial in understanding a molecule compared to a flat representation on paper." "When analysing complex data it is often only possible to rationalise it by visualising it in 3-D, however this is notoriously difficult to transfer to the flat page of a journal. VRML gives us a medium through which we can easily create 3-D representations of the data that others may down-load and explore. Furthermore, it is intended that future versions of VRML will be capable of both animation and motion physics (i.e. objects moving according to physical laws), so the development of properties through time may be traced, obviously an important concern for chemists." The full article can be located at: http://alcyone.pcl.ox.ac.uk/people/alan/VRML/Paper/vrml.html Please address any questions or comments to Matt Becker <matt@cybernautics.com>. Matt Becker Cybernautics, Inc. 415.289.1580 x128 matt@cybernautics.com chemweb: A list for Chemical Applications of the Internet. Archived as: http://www.lists.ic.ac.uk/hypermail/chemweb/ To unsubscribe, send to majordomo@ic.ac.uk the following message; unsubscribe chemweb List coordinator, Henry Rzepa (rzepa@ic.ac.uk)