What is atomos?

ATOMOS is a chemistry education tool that lets you explore three-dimensional models of molecules using hand gestures captured by your webcam. It runs entirely in a single HTML file with no installation, no server, and no external dependencies to download. You just open it in a browser, allow camera access, and start interacting. The app includes six molecules commonly found in chemistry textbooks: Water, CO2, Methane, Ammonia, Ethanol, and Benzene. Each is rendered in a ball-and-stick style, showing atoms as colored spheres connected by bonds, with lighting to give depth. A panel alongside shows the formula and chemistry notes for each molecule. Gesture control is handled by MediaPipe Hands, a technology that detects 21 points on each hand in real time through the webcam. A custom classifier built into the app interprets those points as discrete gestures: holding one palm up rotates the molecule, bringing two palms together or apart scales it, pinching with thumb and index finger highlights a specific atom, and closing both fists resets the view. For users who prefer not to use gestures, keyboard shortcuts cover all the same actions. Because all processing happens inside the browser using a WebAssembly runtime, the camera feed never leaves the device, and nothing is sent to any server. The app uses Three.js for WebGL-based 3D rendering, along with vanilla HTML, CSS, and JavaScript with no build tools. It can be deployed to any static hosting service, including GitHub Pages, simply by uploading the single file, and it is released under the MIT license.