Chemistry for everyone.

Atomical is a free tool that helps students make the leap from memorizing to understanding the what, why, and beauty of chemistry.

Moving fluidly between representations — formula, Lewis structure, 3D geometry, the electron picture — is understanding chemistry. Students who can't make that leap fall back on memorization. Chemistry defeats a quarter to a third of those who attempt it, taking down careers in science, medicine, and engineering with it.^{DFW (D, F, or withdraw) rates in U.S. general-chemistry courses commonly run
25–40%. J. Chem. Educ.,
2024 →}

A graphing calculator for chemistry.

Type formulas

Molecules update live.

Make connections

Explore patterns

Assemble molecules

Understand molecular geometry by snapping together atoms. This earlier prototype demonstrates molecule construction via direct manipulation — molecular geometry becomes a tactile experience thanks to a real-time VSEPR solver.

There's more

Planned features include: reactions; editable Lewis and Bohr diagrams; reaction-enthalpy figures; games and practice problems; a molecular atlas for exploring molecules by color, taste, smell, functionality, and cosmic origin.

Made by an expert toolsmith.

I'm Chaim Gingold. For 25+ years I've turned technology into playful, powerful tools that amplify human imagination and intellect.

I started out working with Will Wright (SimCity, The Sims) on Spore, designing its celebrated creative tool suite. Since then I've built Earth: A Primer, a geology book brought to life through the magic of simulation, and written Building SimCity (MIT Press 2024), which began as my computer-science PhD. At Dynamicland I worked with Bret Victor and Alan Kay on the future of tools for thought.

My next project is a beautiful but notorious gatekeeper: chemistry.

Selected works More at chaim.io

Maxis · Electronic Arts

Spore Creature Creator

Designed the creative tool suite — 191M+ creations.

New York Times: "genius"

Apple Best of 2015 · ASLA Best STEM App

Earth: A Primer

Geology, alive through simulation.

Bret Victor: "A tour de force"

Building SimCity book cover — MIT Press

Building SimCity

How computer simulation became a medium.

Praised by Will Wright, Alan Kay & Stewart Brand

Free for everybody.

A sustainable public good: free for every student and teacher, and built to stay that way. Patrons and grants fund the build; the business sustains the public good.

Desmos put a free graphing calculator in front of millions of students and sustains it today through licensing and partnerships.^{Desmos Classroom joined Amplify in 2022; the calculators continue under
Desmos Studio, an independent public-benefit company.
desmos.com/about →} Atomical aims to do the same: the free web tool earns reach and trust — shareable molecule links, exports for handouts, embeds in courseware. Revenue comes from the layers that build on it: paid experiences (the Earth: A Primer model), and embedding, practice, and assessment licensed by publishers.

Now

Free web tool

The public good: always free for students and teachers — shareable, embeddable, everywhere.

Authored experiences

The Earth: A Primer model — e.g. "Bonding: A Primer."

Later

Partners & publishers

Embedding, practice, and assessment licensed by courseware and publishers.

The core innovation.

A kernel synchronizes every chemistry representation and keeps them grounded in physical reality: manipulate one view, the others re-derive. The same propagation that links the views can verify them — enabling automatic feedback and grading, from practice problems to games. And it can ground an AI tutor in chemical reality, the way agentic coding tools are grounded in executable code.

The kernel is extensible, so there's always room for more features to bloom. Try pressing the core.

Endorsements.

Letters of support are being gathered now — from chemistry educators, curriculum writers, researchers, and toolmakers.

Advisor Paul Rothemund Inventor of DNA origami; MacArthur Fellow; Research Professor at Caltech.
Advisor Shawn Douglas Associate Professor of Cellular & Molecular Pharmacology, UCSF; creator of cadnano, the standard DNA-origami design software.
Advisor Eli Luberoff Founder & CEO of Desmos, the free graphing calculator used by 75+ million people a year.
Advisor Michael Novak Northwestern University; former middle-school science teacher, co-creator of the Next Generation Science Storylines approach behind OpenSciEd, and a developer of its free, full-course High School Chemistry.

I need your help.

Atomical is just getting started, and I'm looking for advisors, endorsers, and patrons to help carry it from working prototype to public launch. Interested in learning more? Want to help? Get in touch.

Chaim Gingold · chaimg@gmail.com