Three-Dimensional Molecule Viewer iPhone App

The Three-Dimensional Molecule Viewer helps students understand the true structure of some common molecules by displaying anaglyphic wire frame representations of them. Molecules are displayed in a standard 2-dimensional view but when you select the 3-dimensional view they seemingly pop out of the screen. YOU select whether or not they are displayed in 3D, and you control just 'how' 3D they are, from apparently floating in space to just barely extending out of the screen to appearing to be behind the iPhone! YOU use a slider bar to control the view you get, or you can toggle the SPIN button to make them endlessly spin, floating in space. This is an entertaining novely app, but also a very instructional and educational one for anyone learning or just interested in chemistry.
View in App Store

The image to the left shows an aspirin molecule in 2D, the image to the right is the same molecule in 3D. You can turn on and off the display of the objects bounding box (a cube showing the full extent of the molecule along all three axis), you can control the orientation of the object by spinning it about its vertical axis, and you control the depth of the object. You can 'slide' it so it appears to be behind the iPhone, and 'slide' it out into space in front of the iPhone.


In this screen you select which molecule you want to view. Since anaglyph classes come in a number of different color schemes, you can select which color scheme is used in the display.
  • R/C Red & Cyan - probably the most common
  • R/B Red & Blue
  • R/G Red & Green
  • G/M Green & Magenta

Here is a caffeine molecule shown in the four different colors schemes you can choose from:
Red & Cyan Red & Blue Red & Green Green & Magenta
A quick note on anaglyph images and glasses
Anaglyph images have two very similar but different images of different colors superimposed to make one image. When viewed through glasses with lenses of different colors each eye sees only one image and the brain reconciles these two different 2D images into the resulting 3D shape. This is similar to, but not as nearly as advanced as, modern movies that use polarized filters to achieve the same effect. The polarized method as the advantage that both images can have colors, and the result is in color instead of black and white.
Colored glasses are required to get the desired 3d effect. A web search using the term anaglyph glasses will return a tremendous number of sites offereing these glasses for sale, including: (This is not necessarily an endorsement of these sites, just some that came up doing a search.)
About the programmer
Kevin Neelands lives in Gainesville, Florida (home of the fightin' gators) and gets his kicks writing silly little programs. His favorite molecules are ethanol and caffeine.