Lego + Isomers = the Mariachi-mers!

ByMark Coster

I loved playing with Lego when I was a young boy and I don’t think it is an over-statement to say that the love of building more complicated constructions from simple Lego building blocks led, at least in part, to me becoming an organic chemist!

It struck me, recently, that Lego minifigures could be used to help illustrate some of the key concepts in Isomers and Stereochemistry. This is a topic that causes great consternation for many new Organic Chemistry students. And so the Mariachi-mers were born!

I will be sharing content on Isomers and Stereochemistry, using the Mariachi-mers, in early 2019. For now, here is a flow-chart for deciding how to compounds are related, illustrated with Lego Mariachi-mers (and a few Lego Fairy Bat-mers) for analogy. The image is large, so click on it to expand. Also, I’ve made it available under the Creative Commons CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 license, so feel free to share and distribute!

Click here for a higher resolution (3700 x 3316) version.

The 'team' is Dr. Mark Coster. :) Mark makes stuff.

When he’s not making stuff, he’s teaching other people how to make stuff. Mark was one of those kids who loved nothing more than to build things out of Lego. He still feels that joy, but now his ‘stuff’ is molecules that he builds from atoms.

He occasionally writes biographies in third person. ;)

And he still likes Lego too.

Organic Chemistry Explained

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