Advanced Inorganic Chemistry
Description
Inorganic Chemistry
Description
This course covers fundamentals of central topics in inorganic chemistry from historical to modern-day perspectives. Topics include: coordination compounds (history, structure, bonding theories, reactivity, applications); solid state chemistry (crystals, lattices, radius ratio rule, defect structures, silicates & other minerals); and descriptive chemistry of the elements.
Hyperphysics
Description
The hyperphysics website uses concept maps as a way to organize physics content knowledge: http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/hframe.html (condensed matter). I cam across this website while doing a review of the literature on what students know about semiconductors. There are nice explanations of many of the topics associated with semiconductors and they are organized in an unique way.
Helping Students with Visual Impairments See Colors
Description
I have had some students in class have a hard time identifying colors (flame tests, solution color, acid-base indicators, etc.) because of a visual impairment. There are many cell-phone apps that are helpful in aiding these students. "Pixel Picker" allows the students to load a picture from a device (cell phone, ipad). This is helpful because students are now dealing with a "frozen" image. Moving the cross-hair to different parts of the picture changes the R-G-B values. The "Color Blind Pal" app uses a more qualitative approach.
Quadruple Bond Acrobatics
Description
Four pairs of students represent quadruple bonding in metal complexes by "forming bonds" with a variety of physical methods involving actions like facing each other while holding hands (sigma bond), touch hands and feet of their partner "above and below" the plane (two pi bonds), touching hands and feet while facing each other (delta bond). This results in a "Twister"-like pile of students resembling the quadruple bonding interaction
Teaching Computational Chemistry
This is a series of in-class exercises used to teach computational chemistry. The exercises have been updated and adapted, with permission, from the Shodor CCCE exercises (http://www.computationalscience.org/ccce). The directions provided in the student handouts use the WebMO interface for drawing structures and visualizing results. WebMO is a free web-based interface to computational chemistry packages (www.webmo.net).
CompChem 05: Infrared, Thermochemistry, UV-Vis, and NMR
Description
This is the fifth in a series of exercises used to teach computational chemistry. It has been adapted, with permission, from a Shodor CCCE exercise (http://www.computationalscience.org/ccce). It uses the WebMO interface for drawing structures and visualizing results. WebMO is a free web-based interface to computational chemistry packages (www.webmo.net).
Digital Lab Techniques Manual
Description
MIT OpenCourseWare has a great series of videos explaining (synthetic) lab techniques
Inorganic Chemistry
Description
This course introduces the chemistry of transition metals and main group elements. Topics include theories of bonding, kinetics and mechanisms of reactions of transition metal complexes, oxidation-reduction reactions, hard-soft acid-base theory, and solid-state chemistry. Applications of inorganic chemistry to other areas (organic, analytical, and physical chemistry, as well as biology and biochemistry) are highlighted throughout the course. The laboratory portion of the course involves the synthesis and spectroscopic investigation of inorganic complexes.
CompChem 06: Electron Densities, Electrostatic Potentials, and Reactivity Indices
Description
This is the sixth in a series of exercises used to teach computational chemistry. It has been adapted, with permission, from a Shodor CCCE exercise (http://www.computationalscience.org/ccce). It uses the WebMO interface for drawing structures and visualizing results. WebMO is a free web-based interface to computational chemistry packages (www.webmo.net).