2014 Biennial Conference on Chemical Education

Fundamental chemistry concepts such as conformation, stereochemistry, chirality and the geometrical shapes of metal coordination spheres cannot be properly understood without knowledge of the three-dimensional nature of chemical compounds. Rather than using molecular modelling kits to aid student learning, with their limitations and misconceptions, how about using real crystal structures? The Cambridge Structural Database (CSD) stores the published results of small molecule organic and organometallic X-ray diffraction studies: real structures and not idealised models, thus an ideal resource for teaching chemistry.

This hands-on workshop will familiarise you with the free teaching subset of the CSD, the WebCSD online platform that accesses the subset and to new materials that introduce key chemistry concepts that frequently require visual aids to ensure full concept comprehension. Supervised by an academic with over 20 years teaching experience in UK high schools, these exercises have been written by students for students and have wide applicability.