The Ames Lab is playing GAMESS with chemistry students.

GAMESS, or General Atomic and Molecular Electronic Structure System, is giving ISU chemistry students a chance to make major contributions to the Air Force and the Department of Defense, said Mark Gordon, director of Ames Lab’s Applied Mathematics and Computational Sciences Program.

There are eight graduate students and two undergraduates at Iowa State working to obtain chemical results and writing programs to make GAMESS even better, said Michael Schmidt, associate scientist at the Ames Lab.

All 10 students, who are receiving real-life experience through the program, are chemistry majors. They attend meetings, show their results and will be actively involved in the planning and organizing of the Ames Midwest Theoretical Chemistry Conference, to be held in June.

“[Attending the conference will be] mostly graduate students from the Midwest,” Schmidt said.

At least 100 people will attend, he said.

GAMESS is a computer program that helps chemists understand how chemical reactions occur.

When molecules encounter other molecules, a chemical reaction occurs and two new molecules form. These reactions occur over many steps, called mechanisms.

The program allows chemists to understand the details of these mechanisms, Gordon said.

“The main point of quantum chemistry is that we have to treat electrons in atoms and molecules in a very special way, because they are so small,” he said.

When chemists understand the details of mechanisms, there is a chance to discover new molecules, Gordon said.

“These new molecules might be new drugs to combat diseases, new coatings for cars or airplanes, or new rocket fuels,” said Gordon.

Scientists at the lab believe the program saves time and energy on their part.

“This procedure is very neat, because if theory predicts the molecule is probably not worth making, we can save a considerable amount of time and money,” Gordon said.

“On the other hand, if we predict that the molecule may be promising, we can go further and try to predict likely mechanisms by which the molecule might be synthesized.”

Using GAMESS, Gordon and his associates have been working on a special research program to design efficient, environment-friendly fuels.

“It’s all a chemistry problem,” Schmidt said about finding new fuel.

The Air Force also wants to improve the ceramic tiles that cover the space shuttle to absorb the heat from re-entry, he said.