What is ChemInteractive?

ChemInteractive is a free online resource for students of organic chemistry. It provides learners with a large selection of problems on organic structure, nomenclature and reaction mechanisms so that they can test their knowledge, and hone their skills, in those areas.

It provides extensive help, and detailed feedback on user's solutions, to guide them and help them learn how to solve problems in core aspects of organic chemistry.

Problem solving is key to understanding, and ChemInteractive acts like an online tutor, helping learners to solve problems as a human tutor would, but available to help anywhere, anytime and at 'anypace'.

It is much more than just an online problem bank, it mimics some key aspects of human tutoring, as illustrated in the screenshots below:

Problem solving in an authentic way: Learners draw structures and mechanisms, rather than answering multiple choice questions.
Extensive help and learning resources (including links to other sites) are provided.

Solutions submitted by users are analysed in a 'chemically-intelligent' manner and detailed feedback is provided.
ChemInteractive is (somewhat) adaptive; as learners improve it will gradually increase the difficulty of the problems that it presents.

Learners have fine-grained control over the types and difficulty of the problems.
Learners can monitor their mastery and the data are stored if they register (free) and login.

Problem Types

Practice interconverting between different representations of organic compounds, and adding lones pairs and formal charges to atoms.
Practice drawing the structures corresponding to IUPAC names.
Practice drawing curved arrow mechanisms for organic reactions.
Practice drawing the products expected from common reactions.

Use the menu at the top of the page to try ChemInteractive problems.

Who is ChemInteractive for?

ChemInteractive is designed to help students in the early stages of learning organic chemistry. The problems are at a level suitable for students in advanced high school programmes (e.g A level or AP Chemistry) or in introductory organic chemistry courses of undergraduate programmes.
However, learners in many contexts may find this site useful. If you are studying organic chemistry, why not try some of the problems to see if they help.
Chemistry educators may wish to recommend the site to their classes and I would be pleased to hear any comments or suggestions arising from their students' experiences.

What's New

Updates are listed at News, some of the most significant recent changes are listed below.

Mar 2025: MAJOR NEW FEATURE Reaction problems: problems involving predicting the products of common reactions
Dec 2024: Structure problems: Two new problem types, "Add lone pairs" and "Assign charges".
Nov 2024: Nomenclature problems: Learning resources for name to structure problems, including the first "ChemInteractive Guide", added.
Oct 2024: Nomenclature problems: MAJOR UPGRADE: Much more detailed feedback is now provided.
Sep 2024: Mechanism problems: Pericyclic (Diels-Alder, etc.) mechanisms, and polar cyclic mechanisms, are now inlcuded
Jul 2024: MAJOR NEW FEATURE Structure problems: problems involving interconversion between Lewis and line structures

Future plans: ChemInteractive is a work in progress, it is not complete. Structure, nomenclature, mechanism and reaction problems are included in the current release (regular upgrades during 2025). It is hoped that problems on other topics will be added in the future.

If you have any comments or suggestions, please submit them using the Comments page.

Technical requirements: No downloads or plugins are required. ChemInteractive should work on computers with any operating system as long as a modern browser is used; the only requirement is that JavaScript must be enabled. It should work OK on tablets too, but is very difficult to use on very small screens. Some features will work on phones (iOS & Android) but others will not. Only a few devices have been tested - if you find bugs or experience difficulties please report them here.

Privacy: No personal information is recorded (even for registration). The development of ChemInteractive is done on a voluntary basis, with support from UCD School of Chemistry, so it is entirely free and there are no ads, and no cookies or trackers are used. Statistics are collected using Google Analytics, but only non-specific information about users' broad locations and engagement with the site is collected. If you wish to leave a comment in the Comments page, your username will be shown on the comment, and you will have options to provide an email address and your location (town/city).

Developed by Dr Mike Casey, School of Chemistry, University College Dublin.

Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

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