New examples are presented showing how chemical information searches of the Cambridge structure database (CSD) can be used to illustrate basic core concepts in organic and inorganic chemistry. These include analysing the gauche conformational effect in 1,2-disubstituted ethanes, square planar <i>vs</i> tetrahedral coordination in four-coordinate transition metals, exploring the regiochemistry of aromatic electrophilic substitution using geometrical properties of hydrogen bonding interactions to the ring and the features of π-Resonance in amides. Since such searches take only a few minutes, they can easily be incorporated as demonstrations in lectures, or feature as part of chemistry laboratories, workshops or flipped lectures. New examples are disseminated to students using a blog (doi.org/74p) combined with Twitter alerts.

Discovery of chemical concepts from 3D chemical information searches of crystal structure databases

251st National Meeting (2016)

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