Is Periodic Mole a chemistry course?

No. Periodic Mole drills the recall layer chemistry assumes you already have — element symbols, charges, how a formula assembles, what a mole is — through 6 games. It has no lectures, labs, or worked examples. A course teaches the reasoning; this makes the facts underneath it automatic first.

Will it teach my student stoichiometry or bonding?

No — a teacher does that, and does it better than a game can. Periodic Mole makes sure the pieces those topics rely on are already fluent: what the symbols mean, which bonds form, what a mole represents. The lesson still happens in class.

Why drill facts instead of teaching concepts?

Because working memory is the bottleneck. John Sweller's cognitive load theory (1988) holds that learners have limited working capacity, and that effort spent recalling basics is capacity unavailable for reasoning. A student still working out what Fe stands for has less left over for why a reaction ran the way it did. Making the basics automatic is what frees the capacity.

What does it cost, and what is free?

Two games — Bond Forge and Pt Paddle — are free with no account, covering the first twelve elements, and the full interactive periodic table is free to browse. Full access is a one-time $59 for a year or $79 for two, with a 30-day refund and no automatic renewal.

A high-school chemistry study app

Stop wasting brain space on polyatomic ions.

Periodic Mole drills the boring stuff into automatic recall, so your working memory has room for the actual chemistry. For students who want the basics fluent before class, not after.

Grounded in chemistry-education research

Games: 6
A day: 10 min
Per student: $59

See pricing, from $59 Play Bond Forge free →

30-day money-back guarantee.

Times tables

Remember when 7 × 8 was a thing you had to stop and figure out? You would start counting by sevens, lose track, start over. By the time you got to 56, you'd forgotten what you needed it for.

Then one day 7 × 8 = 56 just appeared. The math didn't change. Your brain did.

Chemistry works the same way. The kids who breeze through it aren't smarter; they've memorized the periodic table, the polyatomic ions, and a handful of other short lists so well they don't have to think about those parts anymore. So when the teacher hands them a problem, their brain has room left over to actually solve it.

Your working memory holds about four things at once. Every fact you haven't drilled to automatic eats one of those slots. If three slots are gone to "wait, what does that symbol mean," the fourth one doesn't carry the rest of the problem very far.

Periodic Mole is the part where 7 × 8 = 56 just appears.

What we do

Periodic Mole is the multiplication tables of chemistry. It has one job. Take the facts every high-school chemistry unit assumes you already have — element symbols, charges, the polyatomic ions, how a formula assembles, which bonds form, what a mole is — and burn them into long-term memory.

The drilling happens 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. 6 games, ten minutes a day, no worksheet.

A spaced-repetition deck keeps what the games win from fading. The review schedule is built on retrieval-practice research (Bjork, Roediger), the same approach medical students use to memorize 4,000 drugs.

Bond Forge and Pt Paddle are free to play in the browser right now, no account needed. The rest come with full access.

For the elements where the symbol fights the name. The symbol comes from an older word for the element (Latin for Pb and Ag, German for W), which is why "Pb" looks nothing like "lead." You think the phrase. The word rides along with it.

Pbfrom Latinplumbum
Plumber Pete and the Lead Balloon
→ recalls Lead
Agfrom Latinargentum
Argentina's Silver Tango
→ recalls Silver
Wfrom Germanwolfram
Wolverine the Tungsten Warrior
→ recalls Tungsten

What it isn't / what it is

It isn't

A chemistry course. Bonding, stoichiometry, titrations — those lessons belong to your teacher.
A chemistry textbook with badges glued on.
A thousand low-quality flashcards farmed off Quizlet.
A subscription that auto-renews when you forget to cancel.

It is

6 chemistry games and a spaced-repetition deck, all aimed at the facts that show up most in high-school chemistry.
Grounded in published chemistry-education research (NGSS, AAAS Project 2061).
Built for the standard high-school course; AP and IB students welcome.

Class gets better at both ends: the teacher spends the hour on the chemistry they love, and the student has the recall to follow it. Judge it on whether Tuesday's lesson makes more sense because Monday's tables were already there.

Common questions

Is Periodic Mole a chemistry course?: No. Periodic Mole drills the recall layer chemistry assumes you already have — element symbols, charges, how a formula assembles, what a mole is — through 6 games. It has no lectures, labs, or worked examples. A course teaches the reasoning; this makes the facts underneath it automatic first.
Will it teach my student stoichiometry or bonding?: No — a teacher does that, and does it better than a game can. Periodic Mole makes sure the pieces those topics rely on are already fluent: what the symbols mean, which bonds form, what a mole represents. The lesson still happens in class.
Why drill facts instead of teaching concepts?: Because working memory is the bottleneck. John Sweller's cognitive load theory (1988) holds that learners have limited working capacity, and that effort spent recalling basics is capacity unavailable for reasoning. A student still working out what Fe stands for has less left over for why a reaction ran the way it did. Making the basics automatic is what frees the capacity.
What does it cost, and what is free?: Two games — Bond Forge and Pt Paddle — are free with no account, covering the first twelve elements, and the full interactive periodic table is free to browse. Full access is a one-time $59 for a year or $79 for two, with a 30-day refund and no automatic renewal.

For parents

If chemistry is rough on your kid, intelligence and effort are probably not the reason. High school chemistry is built on memorization most kids never finish, and the textbook assumes they did.

Periodic Mole gives them ten minutes of daily practice that compounds. By unit two, they're working on actual reasoning instead of trying to remember what nitrate is.

Built for high-school chemistry. No data sold. No ads. One payment, no subscription.

30 days to decide.

$59 for the school year, $79 for two. Full access, every game and every concept page. If it isn't working inside 30 days, email us and we refund. No forms, no exit survey, no questions about how much they used it.

See pricing, from $59 What is this? →

Mole General's Warning:

Primary

Using these games to learn chemistry basics may lead to actual enjoyment of chemistry, reducing your cool factor and increasing your chances of getting a good grade.

More Mole General's warnings →