Why we built Periodic Mole

The multiplication tables of chemistry. Symbols, charges, how a formula goes together, which bonds form, what a mole actually is — the layer that has to be automatic before the real chemistry has room to land.

It works by playing: in Bond Forge you connect dots until a molecule holds together, in Pt Paddle you rally a puck back fast enough to keep up, in Run the Table you race the clock on your own, in Molecule Hunter you hide your molecules and hunt the opponent's, in Capture the Nucleus you take a strategy board one hex at a time, and in Storm the Castle you lay siege to a castle against Cobalt, who talks back. A spaced-repetition deck schedules the review so none of it fades.

We do not teach bonding or explain stoichiometry. Teachers do that, and a game is a poor substitute for one. What a classroom rarely has time for is the drilling underneath — and a student still working out what Fe stands for has no attention left for why the reaction went the way it did.

So we took the narrow job and tried to do it properly. When it works, both sides of the room get a better hour: the teacher spends it on the chemistry they love, and the student keeps up. Judge it on whether Tuesday's lesson lands better because Monday's tables were already there.

The standard high-school sequence: periodic table, atomic theory, bonding, stoichiometry, gases, solutions, acids and bases, thermochemistry, and nuclear chemistry. It drills the terms, symbols, and relationships each of those topics assumes you already know; the lessons themselves stay in class. The chemistry is the same wherever you take the course, and AP and IB students need the same foundation.