Visualizations and analyses of crystallographically-determined 3D molecular structures can greatly enhance student learning, and are ideally suited to teaching fundamental chemistry concepts including stereochemistry, conformation, chirality and reaction mechanisms. In spite of this, crystallography has historically been poorly represented in University teaching curricula and at best is simply noted at high school level.  As a consequence, there is sometimes a limited understanding of how to retrieve and interpret crystallographic information.The Cambridge Structural Database (CSD) serves as the worldwide repository of experimentally-measured 3D crystal structures. Built over 45 years and containing more than half-a-million structures the CSD is a vast and ever growing compendium of accurate 3D molecules and is finding increasing application in chemical education.This talk will focus on continuing efforts to broaden the use of crystallographic data, and in particular to make CSD structures accessible and comprehensible to students and teachers. We will showcase a teaching subset of more than 500 CSD structures created specifically to illustrate key chemical concepts, and a growing collection of teaching materials that make use of this subset in classroom and laboratory environments.These educational tools are freely available on the web and their utility has recently been recognised by the Chemistry Division of the Special Libraries Association and ACS Division of Chemical Information in their publication Information Competencies for Chemistry Undergraduates: the elements of information literacy. 2nd ed. Sept 2011.

Resources for introducing crystal structure information into undergraduate teaching

243rd National Meeting (2012)

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