This web resource is a diverse list of VIPEr forum topics about teaching that may be of interest to new faculty assigned to teach general chemistry for the first time. It was created as part of a larger collection to help new faculty get started in the classroom.
This is a flipped classroom activity intended for use in a first semester general chemistry course. Students are expected to have prior knowledge in determining the molar mass of compounds, how to carry out mole/gram conversions, and how to write balanced chemical reactions. The activity includes:
1) pre-lecture learning videos that guide students through carrying out basic stoichiometric calculations, determining the limiting reactant, and determining the percent yield of a reaction;
This activity is designed to relate solid-state structures to the density of materials and then provide a real world example where density is used to design a new method to explore nanotoxicity in human health. Students can learn how to calculate the density of different materials (gold, cerium oxide, and zinc oxide) using basic principles of solid state chemistry and then compare it to the centrifugation method that was developed to evaluate nanoparticle dose rate and agglomeration in solution.
This morning before class I was picking on one of my students for having her organic chemistry textbook out on her desk. I believe I said something along the lines of 'how dare you contaminate my classroom with that!' She explained how she had an exam today and I let it drop. That is until later in the class when I was teaching about chelates. I had a sudden inspiration. I asked the student to pick up her organic book with one hand. I then warned her that I was going to smack the book. I did and she dropped it.
This in-class activity can be used to teach structural (or constitutional) isomers. This worksheet presumes that students have already had some experience with transition metal complexes such as determining metal oxidation state, recognizing the coordination sphere, and converting between formulas and structures.
I present a format for more effective communiction of errors in lab reports to students that I term Errors Checklists. Grading lab reports are one of the banes of our existence as professors. They are endless, unremitting papers that need to be scrutinized for accuracy, precision and understanding.
In the primary literature, goemetry indices are being used quite often to describe four- and five-coordinate structures adopted by transition metal complexes. This slide deck, which is longer than the intended 5 slides, describes the three common geometry indices (tau4, tau4', and tau5) and provides example calculations for structures that are freely available in the Teaching Subset of the Cambridge Structural Database. (Students can access these structures in Mercury, which is freely available from the CCDC, or via a web request form for which the link is provided below.)
These five slides are intended to share a visual scaffolding that I developed to help my general chemistry students identify what calculations are needed to solve stoichiometry problems.
For twenty years, I have started my second-year Inorganic Chemistry class with a few PowerPoint slides illustrating the inorganic chemistry that is present in a number of societal areas. The point is to emphasize to the students that inorganic chemistry is present in all aspects of life. To make this process more interactive, I made "game pieces" with a topic on the front (e.g, photography or radiation protection or vitamin B12) and an area on the back (energy, materials, biology, medicine, or environment). As each student enters the class, they are asked to take one game piece.
This paper describes the synthesis of a stable compound of sodium and helium at very high pressures. The paper uses computational methods to predict likely compounds with helium, then describe a synthetic protocol to make the thermodynamically favored Na2He compound. The compound has a fluorite structure and is an electride with the delocalization of 2e- into the structure.
This paper would be appropriate after discussion of solid state structures and band theory.
The questions are divided into categories and have a wide range of levels.