Resource Spotlight: SymOtter

SymOtter

I've had the pleasure of working in close proximity to our visiting scientist, Dr. Isaiah Speight, for the past few months! He's been such a pleasure to have in the lab and ALSO is a huge chemistry (and otherwise) nerd. We've talked about all kinds of non-work things (mostly video games and anime, it's his fault that I'm into Attack on Titan now), and also I have a better-than-passing knowledge of M E C H A N O C H E M I S T R Y now, even though I'm almost 100% sure it's dark magic, still.

We were talking about cool chemistry resources and the one that came up was SymOtter, which is a super cool visualization aid for organic chemists. Organic chemistry can feel like another language sometimes, especially when it comes to symmetry operations and visualization. You have to think in such complex terms about 3D spaces and orientations and it's something I for sure struggled with when I first took organic chem as an undergrad.

And look at this thing! It can show you all the symmetry operations for, for example, 18crown6. There's a lot of cool examples in the gallery.