Bob Gotwals began the morning class by introducing his Shodor scholars to the very common water molecule. The model, composed of two white balls representing hydrogen and one red ball representing oxygen, was held before the students and Bob asked them if they knew what the model was. Many of the students knew that the model was water and that it was a very simple chemical molecule. However, Bob explained that the model was only the structural aspect of chemistry because one can only identify the molecule by the way it looks or what atoms compose it. The model could not be used to find water's chemical properties or characteristics so it was partly ineffective. The main point of the water molecule was to show that there are limitations to chemistry using physical models yet a computer program could be used to analyze the properties and characteristics of any molecule as well as view its structure. "This program," Bob2 said, "is called WebMO."
Bob started to introduce the program, WebMO, by having the students build the simple water molecule. Then he asked the shodor scholars to build more complex molecules like ethene, ethanol, and finally aspirin. Most of the students were following pretty closely but some of them had problems building the molecules. Jason, a computational chemistry intern, was able to help them with some problems they were having. After building the cyclobutane molecule using WebMO, it was time for the students' snack.
After snack break, Jenna and Jason led the students out to the plaza level of the building. Bob Gotwals arrived and started to talk about football and how it correlates with chemistry. He arranged the students into the offensive and defensive sides and gave them all positions. When the students were in place, he gave them a play to run called "sweep left 31 trap" in which all of the scholars had a part. After two successful play calls, the Shodor scholars returned to the Shodor office to continue class.
For the rest of the morning until lunch break, Bob Gotwals continued to talk about WebMO and its functionality. He started off by talking about the football play the students had just run outside. He talked about how football was all about the number of players, formation, player positions, how the players move, and the jargon. In correlation, he said that chemistry was about the structure, characteristics, and properties of molecules like water. Later, Bob explained Molecular Orbital theory using football terms. In this speech, he discussed sigma bonding and also sigma star or antibonding molecular orbitals. The atom that the students used to create an orbital diagram was an oxygen atom and then he requested the students calculate the molecular orbitals of singlet oxygen in WebMO. Once the students had created their singlet oxygen and viewed its orbitals, it was time for lunch break.