Chemistry professor professor James Hinton finds immersive 3D visualization to be an invaluable teaching tool – “It’s really important that students be able to touch, feel, see, embrace… these proteins.”

“Kids are visual people nowadays; they like to see things,” says Hinton. “So I began to look around for ways of actually visualizing three-dimensional structures, and I came upon this idea of, ‘Wouldn’t it be nice if we had immersive techniques that would allow us to experience 3-D virtual reality?'”

The theme for Science Week Ireland 2011 is “The Chemistry of Life”. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if children in Irish schools were able to avail of 3-D visualization technologies to really bring chemistry to life?