The literature discussion is based on one of the early papers from the Chirik group (J. Am. Chem. Soc., 2004, 126, 14688). In this communication, the coordination of N2 to a series of (C5H4R)2Ti fragments is examined. Being a communication, it is very short and that helps make it less intimidating for undergraduates. But don't be fooled, it is very rich in the fundamental concepts of orgnaometallic chemistry.
The website shared here includes excellent simulations concerning a wide variety of techniques commonly used in materials science and inorganic chemistry. I have found it particularly useful for X-ray crystallography as the simulations help understand the lectures.
Reading and understanding a journal article is a critical skill to obtain as a student. After college, many students will pursue careers in which learning occurs exclusively from the literature. Students will read a full paper from the journal Inorganic Chemistry and answer guiding questions pertaining to the article. There will be an in class discussion about the article to introduce which is used to introduce the topic of catalysis. This assignment breaks down the article through a series of questions that helps students to navigate a journal article.
The literature discussion is based on a paper by Legzdins (Organometallics, 2017, 36, 26). In this work, the C-H activation of methane by a [Cp*W(NO)(allyl)(alkyl)] compound is described. The paper is extremely well written and approachable for undergraduates, although the initial length and large quantity of experimental data might be a bit intimidating at first. The problem of using methane is a signifiant real world problem and as such should provide an interesting context to talk about this paper.
Literature discussion about the first examples of molecular hydrogen complexes isolated by Gregory J. Kubas in the early 80s. The questions are divided into groups with two levels of difficulty.
The more basic group of questions includes topics on:
1) Coordination Chemistry: electron count, geometry, oxidation state, orbital interactions, types of ligands, binding modes, cis/trans and fac/mer isomers.
2) Symmetry elements and point groups.
3) Basic concepts on spectroscopy: NMR, Raman, IR, UV/Vis, XANES, EXAFS, neutron and X-ray diffraction
See the attachement.
This is a literature discussion based on a short paper on ethylene compounds of the coinage metals (Dias, H. V. R.; Wu, J. Organometallics 2012, 31, 1511-1517). In this paper, analogous ethylene compounds are prepared with Cu(I), Ag(I) and Au(I). The other ligand on the coinage metal is a scorpionate tris(pyrazolyl)borate ligand. The strength of the interaction between the metal and the ethylene varies significantly with the coinage metal as seen in X-ray crystallographic and spectroscopic (1H and 13C NMR) data.
This five slides about came to be from a discussion that happened after Marta Guron and Jared Paul gave a talk at the Philly ACS in Fall 2016. This is a modified version of a presentation given to all chemistry students regarding the proper handling and disposal of chemicals. Certain details will need to be modified to fit your individual institutions. The particular focus of the slides is for students to learn to turn to SDS sheets before using chemicals and to be able to read the labels on chemicals and understand the associated safety concerns.
This is an HTML program that helps you spell with symbols of chemical elements for anything you want. Just cut and paste the text, paragraph or list of names you would like to "symbolize" in the left field. The program automatically displays the words that could be spelled with chemical symbols in the right field. When a word has more than one possible spelling, all of the possible combinations are displayed on a single line.
A rubric articulates the expectations for an assignment and enables faculty to assess student work in a rapid and consistent manner.
This Five-Slides About was developed for the TUES 2016 workshop Organometallica at University of Michigan. It was presented in conjunction with Chip Nataro's modeling of the development of a literature discussion learning object (Ligand effects in titration calorimetry from the Angelici lab).