Coming out of two decades of experience teaching college-level organic chemistry to high school students, Alchmie's principals have learned how to convey difficult scientific concepts to students. These players took what had been an extracurricular preparatory course into the world of mobile gaming through an app called Chairs: an organic chemistry video game. Indicating that "Chairs" makes learning chemistry tactile, intuitive, and fun. the system is named after a phenomenon in chemistry related to cyclohexanes, a molecule where six different tetrahedral carbons are linked together in a circle. When viewed from above, it looks like a hexagon, but from the side, its described as a chair. The point of the game is solve the visual puzzle that results when the cyclohexane molecules move and bond to other molecules. From the premise that young people are really good at playing games and solving puzzles on their phones, the idea of Chairs is to tap into that interest and devloped expertise. The principals envisions using the Chairs template to make other learning games for difficult school subjects but consideration is of turning the firm into a think tank for game ideas that would be licensed to software design firms.
