Structure and Reaction Databases

Teaching Points

• Structures are the language of chemists
• Structures are unambiguous, no need to deal with name variations
• Substructure searching allows questions that cant be asked via a keyword search
• Substructure searching can reinforce chemical principles

bond variations, tautomerism
functional group activity

Reality Check

• Structure/reaction databases are expensive and can be tricky to search
• May need to be creative in introducing students to these resources
• demo disks
• excerpts from training manuals

Teaching Materials

• Chemical Abstracts Documentation
  Structure Searching in The CAS Registry File
  Practice Problems for Basic Structure Searching Workshops
• Descriptions of major structure/reaction databases
• Structure and Reaction Searching

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