With the advent of affordable 3D Printing technology, including in-house printers and web-based commercial enterprises, what had long been a novelty is rapidly becoming a useful tool in the education process. Students have long used chemical model kits to create tactile molecules which help elucidate principles of bonding, VSEPR theory and other three-dimensional properties which are difficult to understand from the two-dimensional world of textbooks and slide presentations. The ability to print copies of common molecules, as they appear in the solid state, can not only bring a sharper understanding of these “static” concepts but can also shed light on dynamic processes such as those involved in molecular machines, host-guest chemistry, protein docking phenomena, and molecular motions. The inherent difficulty in creating models which can demonstrate these dynamic behaviors is finding the correct parameters and materials which will produce an interlocking, flexible model which remains robust. Many academic libraries have created 3D labs providing 3D visualization and printing services. These 3D labs enable us to develop these models collaboratively with researchers, educators, digital fabrication specialists and librarians together.<br/><br/>Using data available from the nearly 800,000 structures in the Cambridge Structural Database (CSD) and software embedded in the visualization and exploration program Mercury, we explore the procedures needed to produce such classroom aids. This presentation, timed to coincide with the end of the 50th anniversary year of the Cambridge Structural Database, will describe our attempts to create dynamic 3D models as well as several educational modules which can be used in conjunction with them.

Enhanced chemical understanding through 3D-printed models

251st National Meeting (2016)

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