Making Organic Molecules with Snatoms! Pinacolone

This chemical education video created at the University of Southern Mississippi from an organic chemistry student features the building of the molecule pinacolone using the Snatoms model kit. This project was sponsored by a minigrant from the Center for Faculty Development at USM.
This Snatoms model kit uses plastic spheres were magnets embedded in them to snap atoms together creating new bonds. A slight tug can pull the bonds back apart breaking them. The snapping and breaking gives a nice feel to the thermodynamics of energy release and input in the two processes.
These videos are meant to help students learning organic chemistry how molecules "look" in three-dimensions. Each element carbon (black), hydrogen (white), nitrogen (blue), oxygen (red) and halogens (green) has their Lewis dot structure neutral valence. Therefore, the hybridization of each element is accurately represented allowing for tetrahedral, trigonal planar, or linear geometries. For double or triple bonds, the added connectors can allow for pi bonds.
A valuable skill in learning organic chemistry is the ability to visualize in three dimensions the overall topology of the molecules. While Lewis dot structures are drawn flat on the white board, the model kit allows for enhanced understanding of sterics, stereochemistry and conformational analysis. The spherical space-filling features of the Snatoms gives a better overall visualization of how much space functional groups actually take up.