Open Access Resources for Crystallography Education in Interdisciplinary College Courses: Crystallographic Databases and
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Open Access Resources for Crystallography Education in Interdisciplinary College Courses: Crystallographic Databases and 3D Printed Models Peter Moeck1, Jennifer Stone-Sundberg1, Trevor J. Snyder1,2, and Werner Kaminsky3 1
Nano-Crystallography Group, Department of Physics, Portland State University, Portland, OR 972070751, U.S.A; [email protected]; [email protected] and [email protected] 2 3D Systems Corporation, Wilsonville, OR; [email protected] and [email protected] 3 Department of Chemistry, University of Washington at Seattle; [email protected] ABSTRACT Complementing a multitude of activities around the International Year of Crystallography, we report here on a few resources that are helpful for integrating basic crystallography into interdisciplinary college education. We concentrate on four resources with which we are directly involved. The Crystallography Open Database (COD) features currently more than 295,000 entries and has over the last decade developed into the world’s premier open-access source for the structures of small molecules and small to medium sized unit cell crystals. ‘Educational offshoots’ of the COD with approximately a thousand entries combined provide structural information on small molecules, selected macromolecules, crystal structures, grain boundaries, and crystal morphologies in the well documented Crystallographic Information Framework (CIF) file format. This information can be displayed interactively on the website http://nanocrystallography.research.pdx.edu and freely downloaded. Files that allow for the printing of selected database entries on any 3D printer have been added to this site and are also freely downloadable. These files were created with the programs Cif2VRML and WinXMorph that convert CIF files directly into 3D printing files. Interested college educators are invited to visit our open access crystallography resource portal and suggest other resources that should receive wider exposure over this portal. INTRODUCTION The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) and the International Union of Crystallography (IUCr) have jointly organized a multitude of activities for the International Year of Crystallography (IYCr) 2014 [1]. Many of these worldwide activities are expected to impact the teaching of crystallography at the college level [2]. Here we report on the small subset of related activities with which the authors are directly involved. Educators and researchers in need of access to crystallographic information on molecular and crystal structures can download files in the Crystallographic Information Framework (CIF) file format (*.cif) from several free online sites discussed in this paper. An important aspect of crystallography teaching involves introducing students to the three-dimensionality of molecules and crystal structures, which can be best achieved with real 3D models. Creating these requires translating the parametric information provided in *.cif files into explicit mesh-files accepted by 3D printers. We re
