InChI Student Worksheet

This document contains a brief intro to InChI suitable for undergraduate students and two exercises, with answer keys. The first assignment asks about the information encoded in a sample InChI. The last question in this assignment asks students to use the InChI Key as a search term – this will be a lot easier to do if this information is available digitally so that students can simply copy and paste the InChI key rather than typing it by hand into wikipedia.

The second exercise asks students to draw several simple organic compounds with an appropriate computer application and generate the InChI and InChI key. Most commonly used structure drawing programs will readily generate the InChI and InChI key for a structure. In addition there are a number of online services that have a structure drawing application that will generate an InChI or InChI key. Grading this exercise will be much easier if done digitally.

Both exercises were written with the intention that students would complete them on line using a Learning Management System (LMS) such as Blackboard, Canvas, Moodle, etc., where the students would copy and paste an appropriate InChI or InChI KEY into a text box, which the LMS would compare with the correct answer which was submitted by the instructor.