Minecraft's Chemistry Update Gives Students Better Insights

Minecraft: Education Edition users can now experience chemistry lessons like never before. Tech giant Microsoft announced an update to Minecraft earlier this year that would enable educators to use the platform to give students valuable insights into chemical properties and reactions.

Now, this update is live and the tech giant is offering up a number of chemistry-themed lesson plans. Educators can also download a teacher's lab book to help them shape their own chemistry lessons in Minecraft and discover how to use the new crafting tools that aim to teach students about elements and compounds.

"Bringing chemistry to Minecraft not only helps spark interest in STEM, but also helps educators engage students in the scientific process, reinforcing creative problem solving and engaging experiments," says Minecraft education director Neal Manegold in the blog post announcing the update.

Manegold notes that the new tools will help students to better visualize complicated concepts like states of matter, structures of atoms and chemical reactions.