This in-class group activity provides several examples of varying difficulty for students to assign MLXZ classifications and electron counts to organometallic complexes. Though some of the problems are straightforward, some are really ambiguous, and the intent is for student groups to grapple with the issues raised by each one and present their findings to the class to spark further discussion.
This website was put together by David W. Mogk, Montana State University–professor of geology and contra/square dance caller. Using square dancing, he shows symmetry elements present in space groups. There are videos on the website, but everything seems simple enough to do in class.
The slides provide review questions for a senior-level treatment of the spectroscopy and reactivity of metal carbonyl complexes. These are intended to be dispersed through one to three class periods.
The first slide is a review of electron counting and the 18-electron rule.
The second slide quizzes the students on the relationship between the electron-density of the metal center and the strength of the C-O bonds in the carbonyl ligands. It is intended to be given after a discussion of how IR can be used to assess the strength of M-C and C-O bonds in the compounds.
Students are asked to find a coordination complex in the recent literature and analyze its structure. This homework or in-class activity is a great way for the instructor to crowd source the discovery of interesting new complexes to use as material in future exams.
This is a collection of LOs that I used to teach a junior-senior seminar course on organometallics during Fall 2014 at Harvey Mudd College.
In this exercise, students are introduced to Mercury, a program for visualizing and analyzing crystal structure data. Students are guided through opening the program for the first time and viewing a structure from the Teaching Subset, a selection of structures from the Cambridge Crystallographic Database (CSD). Activites include changing the representation of the complex, moving the structure around the window, accessing information about the structure, and measuring bond lengths and angles within the structure.
This is a two-week lab in which students synthesize and then characterize three Werner cobalt complexes using IR, UV/VIS and computer calculations using Spartan. Syntheses are based on procedures from:
Angelici, R. J. Synthesis and Technique in Inorganic Chemistry. University Science Books, 1996, pp 13-17.
Borer, L.L.; Erdman, H.W.; Norris, C.; Williams, J.; Worrell, J. Synthesis of trans-Tetraamminedichlorocobalt (III) chloride, Inorganic Syntheses, Vol 31, 1997, pp 270-271.
This set of questions was used to promote discussion within small groups (3 to 4 students) on how changing ligand properties can have dramatic effects on the product distributions in Pd-catalyzed cross coupling reactions. The questions are pretty difficult and not always straightforward, partly because they are derived from the primary literature and thus inherently "messy".