Methane! Carbon Dioxide! Caffeine!

All carbon based compounds. Build them in your own home with this organic chemistry model set. If you want to look smart, it's either this or a DNA model on your shelf, and this one's cheaper.

For organic students, this set it pretty darn good. The atoms are solid; the different bonds are flexible plastic of varying lengths. Lots of attention to detail: Each atom has the slots drilled at precisely the right angles - so when you build a carbon compound (black balls), the atoms end up being exactly 109.5 degrees apart from each other. Pretty cool, huh?

The flexible plastic make it super easy to learn Newman projections, as well as demonstrate steric, angle and torsional interference.

Just a wee bit of cons: Pricey at $40 whopping dollars, but that;s due to the quality and being made by MolyMod in England.

A bit lacking in Carbon, with only 14 atoms in total, so don;t expect to build anything too big.

Lastly, the nature of the plastic makes it hard to accurately 'see' some cyclic structures and and play with chair conformations, but there are other sets that specialize in that.