This collection includes new and/or updated lab experiments useful for online/distance learning. To be included in this collection, data should be provided for others to use in their new virtual laboratory courses. This collection was prepared as part of my response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
In an attempt to find a substitute for our chemistry seminar program, I have found a number of YouTube videos of chemists giving seminar lectures, mostly between 2017-2020. The topics span a range of chemistry disciplines, and are all around 1 hour in length (typical seminar length). I have not watched them, so I cannot vouch for video quality. Feel free to add additional links in the comments below if you know of or find any great talks.
We will ask students to select and watch a certain number of lectures from the list and then write and submit a one-page summary of the talk.
This is a collection of LOs that I used to teach a junior-senior seminar course on organometallics during Fall 2018 at Harvey Mudd College. There were a total of 9 students in the course. The Junior student (there was only one this year) was taking 2nd semester organic concurrently and had not takein inorganic (as is typical).
During our first fellows workshop, the first cohort of VIPEr fellows pulled together learning objects that they've used and liked or want to try the next time they teach their inorganic courses.
This Literature Discussion is based on the article “Square-planar Co(III) {O4} coordination: large ZFS and reactivity with ROS” by Linda Doerrer et. al.
This paper in Science reports the synthesis of decamethyldizincocene, a stable compound of Zn(I) with a zinc-zinc bond. In the original LO, the title compound and the starting material, bis(pentamethylcyclopentadienyl)zinc, offer a nice link to metallocene chemistry, electron counting, and different modes of binding of cyclopentadienyl rings as well as more advanced discussions of MO diagrams.
This is the full literature discussion based on a communicaiton (J. Am. Chem. Soc. 2011, 133, 9278). This paper describes a redox-switch yttrium catalyst that is an active catalyst for the polymerization of L-lactide in the reduced form and inactive in the oxidized form. The catalyst contains a ferrocene-based ligand that serves as the redox active site in the catalyst. This full literature discussion is an extension of the one figure literature discussion that is listed below.
This is what I hope will be a new classification of learning object called a one figure learning object (1FLO). The purpose is to take a single figure from a paper and present students with a series of questions related to interpreting the figure. This literature discussion is based on a paper (J. Am. Chem. Soc. 2011, 133, 9278) from Paula Diaconescu's lab in which a yttrium polymerization catalyst with a ferrocene-based ligand can effectively be rendered active or inactive depeneding on the valence state of the ligand.
This in-class activity was designed for a Chemical Communications course with second-year students. It is the second part of a two-week segment in which students learn how to use ChemDraw (or similar drawing software to create digital drawings of molecules).