Beilstein is an organic chemistry database, which indexes organic substances structure, properties, spectra, and reactions appeared in literature. Obtaining organic substance properties, spectroscopic data and related synthesis reactions is crucial for learning in course Chem216. Learning to use Beilstein database will help you locate those information efficiently. Currently, U-M has access to Beilstein through Reaxys, the web interface.
Through the Reaxys interface, you can search Beilstein, Gmelin, and Patent Chemistry database to retrieve the following content and the references to literature in which the content appear.
In this research guide, you will be able to learn how to search for physical properties and spectroscopic data of a substance based on its structure in Reaxys, how to print out these data from Reaxys, and how to search for synthesis reactions for a specific substance and take advantage of the Synthesis Plans tool in Reaxys. Nicotine will be used as an example for all the searches demonstrated here.
Note: If you are using Firefox 3.6 to search the database, Reaxys are only tested for FireFox 3.6 with Java 1.6.11 or higher. If you experience difficulties with the structure editor in Firefox, please check your Java updates or use IE or Safari instead. Please check Reaxys documents for details about tested environment.