Submitted by Hilary Eppley / DePauw University on Thu, 05/20/2021 - 09:57
My Notes
Description

This literature discussion shows how serious inorganic chemistry topics can related to cultural heritage problems.  The paper is pretty dense in EPR and UV/Vis spectroscopy, but the questions don't go in super great depth on those topics instead focusing on the problem, the main findings, structures and the experiment design, with some additional questions about the spectroscopy.  

Learning Goals

Students will:

  • appreciate the role of fundamental studies in inorganic chemistry on problems of cultural heritage such as art conservation
  • understand who is doing and funding these art conservation studies
  • identify the scientific problem, the techniques used, and the main conclusions of the study
  • use unit conversion skills to investigate claims made in the paper
  • translate written descriptions and cartoons of coordination complexes into structural formulas
  • connect UV-Vis and EPR spectroscopic data to conclusions about structure and reactivity
  • gain an appreciation of the chemical structure of pigments and artists media
  • plan next steps for a research project

 

 

Related activities
Implementation Notes

This would be an appropriate capstone activity for a literature discussion on coordination chemistry after you have talked about MO diagrams and spectroscopy.   I would give students at least a week to process the paper and the discussion questions, perhaps allowing them to work together to complete them.   I would be very interested to see a version of this literature discussion for a graduate level class where more advanced EPR and UV-Vis topics are covered! 

Time Required
1 or 2 class periods for discussion plus additional time for students to read the article
Evaluation
Evaluation Methods

Although I haven't yet used this new learning object in the classroom, I typically ask students to turn in their answers prior to class and then allow them to re-work answers based on the classroom discussion, dividing the credit for the homework assignment into equal portions for those two activities--the first for completion, the second for accuracy based on the classroom discussion.  

Evaluation Results

I will post these when I use this in fall 2021.  

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