This activity leads students through the synthesis of compound nanoparticles and examines how key physical properties such as band gap vary with particle size.  Prior to doing this, students should have some exposure to the structure of solids, band theory, and band gap as a periodic property (see, for example, Lisensky, et al. J Chem.

I teach my organometallics course, a junior/senior level half-course, entirely as student-led presentations of the primary literature.  In the past, the course was populated almost entirely with seniors who had already taken a one-semester advanced inorganic course.  This past year, I taught it to juniors and seniors, and the juniors had not taken inorganic yet.  A description of the course first appeared in J. Chem. Educ. in 2007 (link below).  This VIPEr learning object is an update of the original paper based on my experience over the past two years.