Spectral Game Winners

Following up on my last post about the SpectralGame, I have given out 2 molecular model kits to the highest scoring students in my CHEM242 class.

The first winner was Scott Beaudoin with 24 points followed by HaeJi Choi with 17 points.

The current high scores for the Drexel students can be accessed here. High scores from everyone in the world can be found here. The top score is currently 40 by VK.

Andy and Tony continue to fine tune the operation of the game. The recent introduction of a "Reload Spectrum" button below the molecules prevents the game from stopping prematurely if the spectrum won't load for any reason.

We still welcome contributions of spectra (NMR, IR, UV, MS, etc.) and players!

Spectral Game update

The end of February 09 has come and gone and nobody hit the 100 points to win the molecular model kit I announced earlier for the Spectral Game. The highest score in that time period was 75.

Since my CHEM242 class is having 2 tests and one exam in the next 3 weeks I thought I would make the next prize available to them exclusively. The student from that class who scores highest by 9:50 Wednesday March 4, 2009 will win a molecular model kit. That happens to be the end of class on that day. The scores have been reset.

The game has been improved considerably during the past few weeks. A few security flaws were fixed, including modifying what metadata can be viewed via JSpecView and preventing the refresh button from selecting a new set of molecules. The game play was also changed to get increasingly more difficult over time, including adding more molecules and a timeout after the first set of ten spectra. This work was a collaboration between Andrew Lang, Antony Williams, Robert Lancashire and myself.

We are very excited by what we have put together so far. There are currently 457 H NMR, 389 C NMR, 11 IR and 29 NIR spectra. This is only possible because of people who submitted their spectra to ChemSpider as Open Data - please keep uploading!

The game has been played 1,824 times, viewing the spectra a total of 8,652 times - with a lot of curation by users. (If you see something wrong with a spectrum you can write a note and that helps us clean up the database). We have had 612 unique visitors from 37 different countries - a total of 13,919 page views in just over two weeks!

We now have a wiki with key links relating to the game. I also added the NMR notes from my CHEM242 class and we'll keep collecting resources. This could become a helpful resource to learn about NMR and practice it by playing the game.

Web based Spectra Game

Yesterday I used the NMR game in Second Life during our 2-hour Friday workshop in CHEM242. (We used a new location on Drexel island SLURL) The students who attended had looked at little or no material prior to the workshop. By the end I ended up explaining chemical shifts, complex coupling patterns and diastereotopic hydrogens differentiated by the presence of a chiral center. The only concept we didn't cover is integration, although we used peak size to take a guess about groups with lots of hydrogens (like trimethyl).

I think it was a very efficient way to teach NMR and the students can now go off and continue to practice till our next workshop Monday. Second Life has some advantages - such as the ability to mediate group study sessions where students from remote location can come together to play and discuss spectral assignments using either voice or chat. It is also nice to see the molecules in 3D, especially for bridged cyclic systems.

However, there is a bit of a learning curve to get into Second Life and not all computers have a suitable video card. So it is nice to now have the ability to play the game on a web browser. Andy set up the game play so that the score reflects the number of correct answers obtained in a row. There are also only 3 molecules to choose from instead of 5 in Second Life.

We're using JSpecView to render the spectra so expanding peaks simply requires dragging the mouse across the area of interest. It is also possible to integrate and view the metadata by right clicking.

Currently we mainly have H NMR spectra but we'll be adding lots more C NMR, IR, UV, MS, etc. It all depends on how many Open Data contributions we can find. If anyone has spectra to donate please upload them to ChemSpider and don't forget to check the box for Open Data.

This has been a wonderful example of rapid collaboration by Andrew Lang, Rajarshi Guha, Antony Williams, Robert Lancashire and myself.

Give the web Spectra Game a spin and see if you can beat the high score....