Project completed on July 25, 2022
You can enjoy the interactive 3D model of the quantum mechanical model of a neon atom below. If you’re on mobile, you can even use augmented reality (AR) 
to bring the atom into your world!
“Every artist was first an amateur.”
— Ralph Waldo Emerson
This project was an attempt to prove my proficiency with 3D animation (which I had been honing for a few months) and what seemed to me at the time to be complex chemistry concepts. So, bolstered with the confidence of getting to the top of the month on the r/blender subreddit with my submissions and some beginner’s overconfidence, I decided to make a video about the quantum mechanical model of an atom.
This was my 11th grade holiday homework. It was not necessary to choose such a complex topic, nor was it necessary to make a 3D animation. Like most people, I learned Blender using a free online video course about donuts; unlike most people, though, I gravitated (pun intended) towards rigid body simulations and then soon fluid simulations, both of which my old computer—which ranks in the lowest 1% of computers in terms of performance—did not enjoy very much.
I decided to test my mettle by making some longer form educational content and came up with this, as I hadn’t worked with anything longer than a few seconds up until then. I had to use a lot of scripting and some math to optimize my scenes before rendering, but even this wasn’t enough. Thankfully, due to the Blender community’s kindness, I could use a free community renderfarm called SheepIt to render my project.
The project was exemplary and was displayed before my class and other classes. It was a topic that we had yet to learn in school. My chemistry teacher, expressed astonishment (paraphrased) “I have never seen anything like this before in my entire teaching career, I have never seen a 3D animation by a student, it definitely enhances the understanding of the concept with visualisation.”
This project fueled me with the confidence I needed to tackle all the other projects I have under my belt. My doctor soon asked me to make a 3D animation for him, which I did, and I am excited to make many more.
