Submitted by Adam Johnson / Harvey Mudd College on Wed, 06/18/2008 - 16:58
Forums
Teaching

As one of the presenters at the IONiC symposium in New Orleans said, everyone knows that we only get 1/2 a year to teach inorganic chemistry instead of a year for organic, because, of course, there is only 1/2 as much chemistry to teach (and thats why the books are thinner, I suppose, as well). You have to make choices.  I don't (usually) teach these in my "inorganic" course.  I have taught some of these (marked with a *) in my analytical course, however...

 

  1. acid base chemistry*
  2. equilibria (complex formation especially)*
  3. electrochemistry*
  4. complex solids
  5. Lanthanide/actinide chemistry
  6. main group (p-block) compounds
  7. s-block chemistry
  8. mechanistic chemistry (kinetics, trans effect)

 

YMMV.  What do you exclude?

Nancy Williams / Scripps College, Pitzer College, Claremont McKenna College
Alas, I let 2-6 largely go (I actually like the s-block, so I do this as a way to talk about periodic trends, then go FAST through the p-block, showing how the s-block trends continue).  On electrochem, I spend about a day talking about electron transfer and Marcus theory, which connects to my embarassingly brief section on bioinorganic.  My solid-state portions are also a travesty.  I never learned that material myself (bioinorg/solids), and each year I try to learn (and teach) a little more, but it's still very limited.  I teach a lot of mechanistic chemistry and kinetics, since our students don't get much kinetics in Pchem, and I'm a mechanistic chemist.
Sat, 06/21/2008 - 23:21 Permalink
Lori Watson / Earlham College
I don't teach 1, or 3-7 either, except for mentioning compounds like NaBH4 and what they do.  I do VERY little descriptive chemistry, though I have them all do a paper/project on an element of their choice.  I try to get some equilibria and mechanistic chemistry in as it's a good connection for those who've already had p-chem (maybe a third of the class).  Since I also teach p-chem, my kinetics in that class looks suspiciously like inorganic reaction chemistry (with a few enzymes thrown in for the biochem majors--though I try to pick the ones with a metal!).  I wish I taught more lanthanide/actinide chemistry (I know there's another set of forum posts on that).  I'm thinking next year I'll try to incorporate more of that.  It will probably come at the expensive of a day or two of nuclear chemistry and energy applications which they've mostly seen in gen chem anyway.
Tue, 06/24/2008 - 09:26 Permalink
Keith Walters / Northern Kentucky University

I too have removed 1,3,6,and 7 from my course. Most of these items have been moved to a sophomore "Main Group Chemistry" elective course taught by a colleague. Item 4 comes up when I talk about materials chemistry (e.g, superconductors), and 5 is a single lecture (tied into a little bit of nuclear chemistry). Being a physical inorganic chemistry (and not teaching p.chem), I actually spend a fair bit of time on 8.

My other topic to eliminate is descriptive. As others suggested in New Orleans, there are other ways to present this material (and I like their ideas), given the right supplementary material (a topic for another discussion, no doubt).

Tue, 06/24/2008 - 13:59 Permalink
Maggie Geselbracht / Reed College

I leave out 2, 3, and 5-8, except I feel like I illustrate a lot of p-block chemistry in the early part of the course (200-level course on steroids) where we talk about VSEPR, multinuclear NMR and bonding.

 I feel particularly shameful about not teaching electrochemistry but have never found the right "hook" for bringing it in.  I would like to do a lab on electrochem (CV's and such) but would like something a little more interesting than make this compound and measure the CV.  If anyone has any good electrochem "hooks" for the lab, I would love to hear about them!

Fri, 06/27/2008 - 16:12 Permalink
Bill Bordeaux / Huntington University
I don't teach 2, 4, 6 and 8 in our one-semester course.
Sat, 10/17/2009 - 11:56 Permalink