Programming, software, apps, and coding are becoming increasingly important in chemistry education. However, many educators of chemistry are not skilled in the use or development of these tools. The pythoninchemistry project is working to create examples and tools written in Python for use in educating students about chemical problems. These are Python code examples that can be used to aid in understanding and visualisation for all areas of the undergraduate chemistry curriculum; such as the pylj software for introducing molecular dynamics simulation [1] and the steady state approximation numerical simulation [2]. However, in order to expand and improve the content available from this project, we need your help.
The pythoninchemistry Hackathon is a free event for those interested in using programming to support education in chemistry (no programming experience required), aimed at creating a library of educational content that uses the Python programming language. The aim of the hackathon is to bring together programming experts and those with an interest in chemical education, and to dedicate time to the development of tools that use Python and the Jupyter Notebook framework to allow students of chemistry to interact with practical examples, where the code is fully comprehensible.
The hackathon will take place in January 2020 and we are looking for attendees with an interest in chemical education (again, no programming experience required) and for ideas of chemical concepts which may be implemented as new activities at the hackathon. More details will follow, please register your interest here to receive more information.
- A. R. McCluskey, B. J. Morgan, K. J. Edler, and S. C. Parker, J. Open Source Educ., 1(2), 19-21, 2018.
- Link and Github reference to come.