2026 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Understanding crystal structures, especially those for metals, is a fundamental principle of introductory materials science. In terms of content, the purpose of the Metal Crystal Structures lesson is to introduce students to common metal crystal structures and important quantities associated with crystal structures (e.g., number of atoms per unit cell, atomic packing factor, coordination number). In terms of pedagogy, this lesson is based on the evidence-based educational approaches of flipped classroom and collaborative learning. For the flipped classroom approach, students watch lecture videos before attending class. These videos introduce students to important terms and concepts related to metal crystal structures, and they demonstrate how to find important crystal structure quantities for the Simple Cubic (SC) and Hexagonal Close-Packed (HCP) crystal structures. The pre-work also includes a concept check quiz about the main ideas of the videos. During class, students work in small teams (collaborative learning) to do one of two versions of a derivation learning activity. One version of the activity is used with a longer class time, and the other can be used with more limited in-class time. With a longer class time, student teams use unit cell geometry to derive those important crystal structure quantities for either Body-Centered Cubic (BCC) or Face-Centered Cubic (FCC) crystal structures, and then they give short presentations to share their results with the rest of class. With a shorter class time, student teams follow a guided activity to derive the important quantities for the FCC crystal structure; outside of class, students then derive the BCC values on their own, building on the knowledge developed in the pre-class videos and in-class activity. Regardless of in-class activity version, the post-class homework is to record all of the important quantities for SC, FCC, BCC, and HCP in one summary table. Although all of these quantities can be looked up in materials science resources, students are meant to develop a deeper understanding of the crystal structures and quantities by figuring them out themselves. During the How You Teach It Session, I will share a brief overview of how the Metal Crystal Structures lesson works, including resources I have developed.