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An Overview of PaulingWorld The most recently developed virtual environment - PaulingWorld - has been created to serve as both a teaching and a research tool. PaulingWorld allows users to examine the structure of both small and large molecules from any viewpoint and in a number of single or mixed representations. Users move between representations by using the same menu approach that MaxwellWorld provides. Molecules can be represented in the familiar ball-and-stick form, as vanderWaals' spheres, as a "wireframe" backbone, as coded sticks, and as icons that replace repetitive structures. See Figure 1. For other images from PaulingWorld, please visit our PaulingWorld Images page.
In the latter case, the icons can be interrogated by selecting them with the index finger and depressing the mouse button. The icon is then replaced by a complete representation. Thus, the macrostructure of the molecule remains "iconic," while the region of interest is depicted in a representation of choice. In the ball-and-stick and the sphere representations, texture maps are used to give a visual cue for each atom type (e.g., carbon atoms have with a charcoal-like texture). To support the rapid examination of various molecules, structural data can be read in directly from pdb (protein database) files that are widely available on the WorldWide Web, allowing a new molecule of interest to be built in a few minutes. Future extensions planned for PaulingWorld include the display of equipotential surfaces (implemented as in MaxwellWorld) and the provision for interactively exploring the effects of atom removal and substitution through direct links to molecular modeling applications. For more information about PaulingWorld or Project ScienceSpace, please visit the Research Studies web page.
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