Category:Molecular models

As soon as chemists started understanding the structure of more complex substances, they started to need ways of expressing structures in three dimensions that couldn't adequately be described using 2D pen-on-paper sketches. School models of simple models are often made of coloured wood or plastic balls representing different types of atom, linked with wooden dowels or metal rods or springs to represent bonds.

For extremely complex molecules, computer models are increasingly used, sometimes with stereoscopic viewers.

The existence of growing 3D libraries of molecular computer models is one of the factors pushing the development of standardised formats for viewing 3D shapes – for instance, Wikipedia (as of 2018) still doesn't obviously support 3d objects, even though it has a very large number of encyclopedia pages for individual chemical compounds, that would benefit from having an accompanying 3D model.

In popular media

In the US TV series The Big Bang Theory, Sheldon and Leonard's apartment is full of science-related toys and models, including a large model of part of a DNA molecule.