10 Best Windows Apps for Science

For science lovers, you may need a science app to help you with your science study. Well, a good science app can help you a lot during your study time. Therefore, we have collected the 10 best Windows science apps that are used to display, study, analyze or simulate scientific investigation or experiments. 

ACD/ChemSketch Freeware

The latest version of this science app on Windows lets users quickly and easily draw all kinds of chemical structures including polymers, organometallics, and Markush structures, optimize spatial configuration, and view structures in 2D or 3D. Generate IUPAC and CAS Index nomenclature for molecules with fewer than 50 atoms and 3 ring structures, and get predictions of the octanol-water partition coefficient, logP, along with other molecular descriptors. Access to ACD/I-Lab, our pay-per-use online engine for the prediction of physicochemical, ADME, and toxicity properties, NMR spectra and chemical shifts, and chemical names is also provided.

Advanced Chemistry Development's ACD/ChemSketch Freeware bundle is the sort of easy-to-use cutting-edge toolkit that chemist Isaac Asimov predicted years ago, only it's not science fiction but real software you can download today. ACD/ChemSketch is an easy-to-use chemical modeling and rendering program with a versatile 3D viewer that lets you specify everything from shapes and colors to Initial Internuclear Distance (in Angstroms). You can drag and rotate 3D models, zoom in and out, record frames, and manipulate the view in many ways. ChemBasic, a chemistry-oriented programming tool, is included.

ChemSketch's layout bears a strong resemblance to other drawing and modeling tools, CADware, and photo editors, although the sidebar's list of common chemical elements and symbols indicates the program's chemistry focus. The app opens on the 2D sketch page, which is extremely easy to use: Select an element or other symbol in the sidebar, click the main view, and drag a line to the next chemical bond. Customizable toolbars, packed with symbols and presets, make it possible to build up detailed structures quickly. We could create and manage templates, show or hide attributes such as Aromaticity, generate names, stereo descriptors, and structures, and much more. At the bottom of the window, tabs let us copy our model to the 3D viewer (and vice versa) for a more detailed view. We could search eMolecules, ChemSpider, and other services from inside ChemSketch or from the app, using our usual browser, too.

ACD/ChemSketch is as easy to use as a child's sketch program yet sophisticated enough for the lab. It wasn't so long ago that the modeling and rendering capabilities it offers were unavailable to scientists, let alone any student or amateur. Professionals and students, alike, should try it.

BOINC

BOINC is a program that lets you donate your idle computer time to science projects like [email protected] from SETI, Climateprediction.net, [email protected], World Community Grid, and many others.

After installing BOINC on your computer, you can connect it to as many of these projects as you like. You may run this software on a computer only if you own the computer or have the permission of its owner.

This interesting screensaver doubles as a science experiment. [email protected] (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence at Home) uses the idle time of hundreds of thousands of computers to analyze data about radio or light signals emanating from the vicinity of 30,000 sunlike stars that might indicate intelligent life.

The analysis of the data results in a colorful readout on your desktop, with graphs as well as status displays of your computer's part in the project. The graphics don't move, so you might want to set your monitor to power down after a certain amount of time. The allure, of course, is that your computer may be the one to finally make contact with other life forms. Whether the project succeeds or not, this screensaver provides some nice-looking graphics, a way to get involved in science, and a great conversation starter when others look at your desktop.

World Wind

World Wind lets you zoom from satellite altitude into any place on Earth. Leveraging Landsat satellite imagery and Shuttle Radar Topography Mission data, World Wind lets you experience Earth terrain in visually rich 3D, as if you were really there. Virtually visit any place in the world. Look across the Andes, into the Grand Canyon, over the Alps, or along the African Sahara.

NASA being the big name that it is, we expected its 3D global-imaging program to be made of sterner stuff. Unfortunately, it fell flatter than a collapsed playing-card house.

Less cluttered than Google Earth, with a simple toolbar array of clickable icons that enlarge when you mouse over them, World Wind's promising interface belied too many problems. More than half of those toolbar functions did not work, or were taking so long to render that we had to move on to other things--like sleep. No combination of settings could get the real-time weather maps to show up, nor did the Astrobiology Field Guide do anything at all, despite the cool name.

The Lewis & Clark Trail feature worked, as did the Landmark toggle, the switch from orthographic to topographic renderings, and the Zoom function, so there is hope. You can also look beyond Earth to other planets in the solar system. Some of the app's 3D renderings are very highly detailed, but only for a short list of specific places, like Death Valley.

At this point, though, we can't recommend bothering with World Wind when there are better functioning, more customizable global-mapping programs out there.

WinStars

WinStars 3 is a planetarium for almost any platform. Employing 3D technology to display our solar system in a realistic manner, users may tour the planets, follow a space probe on its long voyage, or observe a celestial event from a distant world, as well as receive the latest astrophysical news from a live feed. Updates add new features and functionality, transforming it into an advanced educational tool for discovering our Universe.

Stella 2000

Complete astronomy software suite exploring realistic skies in real-time, with observing log, Sky Quiz, Live Orbits, telescope support, spoken pronunciation guide, a half-million-word Encyclopedia Astronomica, and concentrated searches embracing planets, comets, asteroids, DSOs, and over 300,000 stars. An integral HTML guide to the solar system, a 1000-term astronomical dictionary, and the 2nd revised and enlarged edition of Aspects of Astronomy--a book-length primer covering topics such as "What are the Stars?", "Choosing a Telescope", "Cosmology", "Dark Matter", "Eclipses", and "The History of Astronomy", to name but a few--are closely coordinated with the sky display and picture windows.

Stella 2000 talks and teaches aloud. With complete incorporation of Microsoft Agent speech technology, animated characters guide you painlessly through the pronunciation of myriad arcane star names and lore, and even read aloud from Astrogloss and Aspects of Astronomy.

Solar System 3D Simulator

Solar System 3D Simulator is a software application that generates a realistic solar system model and planets in 3 Dimension on the PC using advanced physics formulas. It can display the planets and their orbits, the sun, and the moon. The nine planets including planet earth and their detailed physical and chemical information and image pictures are also displayed including solar power, solar energy, and solar eclipse details. The graphical output is in high-resolution 3D full-color format and the orbit view can be adjusted and the orbits tilted and rotated to any angle. The speed of the solar system can also be varied. The Solar System model is useful for learning about the physics of the universe, astronomy, science projects, and science experiments interactively for both adults and kids. Students of Elementary, Middle, and High School can use it for science fair projects ideas, physics help, science news, and creating science articles.

Quad-Lock Unit Converter

Unit Converter is a freeware tool that can take care of all your unit conversions even when offline. It has an easy-to-use interface and contains most of the units commonly encountered while solving engineering problems. With more than 900 units, you are likely to find the units you are looking for. Other features include the ability to quickly search for units and categories, and add user-defined conversions. Everything is built into a single executable file so no uninstaller is necessary. Its small file size makes it easy to distribute among friends and co-workers.

This handy and free utility quickly converts almost every unit of measurement under the sun into other units. Quad-Lock Unit Converter is not just small, but it's also time-efficient, as no installation is required other than clicking on the EXE file. When determining conversions, you first select from a long list of subjects, including ones for area, charge, temperature, mass, density, and thermal conductance. If you don't regularly work with, say, viscosity, you can remove it from the main window. You then choose your source and desired units, such as feet to centimeters. After that, you simply type in a specific number, and this application will convert it to your desired unit in mere seconds. Quad-Lock Unit Converter also provides quick access to a scientific calculator, but that's about the only extra you'll find. Whether you're a scientist working out complex equations or a traveler who's baffled by the metric system, this freebie can help you out of a bind.

Stellarium

Stellarium is a free open-source planetarium for your computer. It shows a realistic sky in 3D, just like what you see with the naked eye, binoculars or a telescope. It is being used in planetarium projectors. Just set your coordinates and go.

Open source and currently in use by planetarium projectors, Stellarium brings astronomer-level features to stargazers of all levels of interest. It's not quite as robust as its competitors, but it's also a much faster program. It doesn't suck away your RAM into a black hole when loading or running. It does run only in full-screen mode, making any other programs you're running inaccessible except for the ALT-Tab switcher.

The default catalog includes 600,000 stars, with upgrade modules that can push the count up to 210 million stars. The constellations of 10 different cultures are included, as well as illustrations and asterisms to help you visualize what the ancients saw. There's a full Messier catalog of nebulae, too. The dawn, dusk, and atmosphere backgrounds were good, but not great on our monitor. They probably look better on a planetarium dome, which is why it's useful that Stellarium also includes a fish-eye view for curved surfaces. Besides equatorial and azimuthal grids, users also get shooting stars when appropriate, eclipse simulation, and skinnable landscapes. Stellarium incorporates star views from the Moon.

The controls live in the lower-left corner and are transparent--a bit hard to find. The nifty record feature is somewhat hampered by the dark interface. When you run the program for the first time it asks that you set your current location, but the mouse-over map of the world was too small to use easily. Stellarium should appeal both to users who need something more academic and less distracting than Google or Microsoft's offerings, as well as those who have a need for an open-source planetarium. Fortunately, that could be any of us.

G*Power

G*Power is a tool to compute statistical power analyses for many different t-tests, f-tests, z-tests, and some exact tests. G*Power can also be used to compute effect sizes and to display graphically the results of power analyses.

WorldWide Telescope

The WorldWide Telescope (WWT) is a Web 2.0 visualization software environment that enables your computer to function as a virtual telescope, bringing together imagery from the best ground and space-based telescopes in the world for a seamless exploration of the universe.

WorldWide Telescope is created with the Microsoft Visual Experience Engine and allows seamless panning and zooming around the night sky, planets, and image environments. View the sky from multiple wavelenghts: See the x-ray view of the sky and zoom into bright radiation clouds, and then crossfade into the visible light view and discover the cloud remnants of a supernova explosion from a thousand years ago. Switch to the Hydrogen Alpha view to see the distribution and illumination of massive primordial hydrogen cloud structures lit up by the high-energy radiation coming from nearby stars in the Milky Way. These are just two of many different ways to reveal the hidden structures in the universe with the WorldWide Telescope.

Choose from a growing number of guided tours of the sky by astronomers and educators from some of the most famous observatories and planetariums in the country. Feel free at any time to pause the tour, explore on your own (with multiple information sources for objects at your fingertips), and rejoin the tour where you left off. You can also create your own tours with music and voiceovers.

WorldWide Telescope is free software from Microsoft that lets users explore the universe with impressive content from the Hubble Space Telescope, NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope, the Chandra X-Ray Observatory Center, and other famed ground- and space-based telescopes. Colorful nebulae, distant galaxies, black holes, and radiation clouds are all accessible from your desktop with a few clicks.

The main WorldWide Telescope interface includes seven tabs for navigating: Explore, Guided Tours, Search, Community, Telescope, View, and Settings. Some of the tabs, such as Explore and Search, include collapsible submenus with further options at the bottom of the interface. The bulk of the screen is devoted to displaying detailed images of objects throughout the universe.

You can move around the sky by clicking with your left mouse and dragging the screen. There are multiple mouse and keyboard commands for rotating and tilting the view and zooming in and out. Right-click on any object to learn more about it. You can save your favorite places in the universe to visit them later under "My Collections," and you can watch guided tours of the universe conducted by experts and users. You can also add text, images, and shapes to enhance your tour, and you can even layer a soundtrack and voice-over.

There are a few niggling bugs--zooming with the mouse wheel is inaccurate, canceling the download of a guided tour crashes the program, and the help content is hidden underneath the Explore drop-down menu. However, the software boasts a hoard of amazing telescope imagery to be explored as well as very cool features that let you view, save, and manage that imagery in many different ways. WorldWide Telescope appears to be an invaluable tool for hobbyists, astronomers, students, educators, or anyone curious about the universe.

Summary

Each science app on Windows has advantages and disadvantages. After learning so much about them, you must already know which one to pick up based on your needs. Now, just download the right Windows app for science and let it help you with your study.