Accessible introductory exercises to crystallography databases and basic practices for undergraduate students

Abstract

To adequately prepare and expose undergraduate students to practical crystallography, a set of exercises were designed to showcase the acquisition of data and information for a series of small mol­ecules. This dry-lab was made to be accessible and approachable irrespective of background knowledge on crystallography. Student commentary indicated a desire to learn more about crystallography where the main criticism was around downloading the software Mercury. Inclusion of these exercises did not require any redesign of the laboratory component of the course it was tested in. This work inspires further development of exercises to continue presenting crystallographic data practices to students at the undergraduate level.