Submitted by Chip Nataro / Lafayette College on Thu, 03/27/2014 - 10:19
My Notes
Description

Having been inspired by a number of wonderful LOs, I introduced group theory in my 'sophomore' inorganic class this spring. In addition to learning to determine the point group of a molecule, students were taught how to construct a qualitative MO diagram though the use of LGOs. While a little more than 5 slides, this is what I used in lecture to cover the material.

 

Attachment Size
Power point slides 794.49 KB
Videos used in slides 1.81 MB
Learning Goals

Students should be able to assign a point group to a molecule and use a character table, generator functions and LGOs to construct a MO diagram for simple molecules.

Implementation Notes

The brief videos were captured from Molwave 3DMolSym (http://www.molwave.com/software/3dmolsym/3dmolsym.htm). I did not cover all of the symmetry operations (most notably skipping inversion centers and identity) as they are not necessary for point group determination. I debated including improper roations but left them. In the future I may not include them since it is highly unlikely that I will give students a molecule that is Sn in symmetry. I also opted to give students very abbreviated character tables. I do teach a senior level course that has a more rigorous group theory component, but I felt simplifying the character tables in this course would be appropriate.

Time Required
3 lectures
Evaluation
Evaluation Methods

A related lab and exam questions have been posted.

Creative Commons License
Attribution, Non-Commercial, Share Alike CC BY-NC-SA
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