This laboratory exercise was developed to compliment several weeks of freshmen or sophomore level quantum chemistry lecture material at our institution. The students meet in a computer lab on campus and use the software package known as GaussView.
This is a great website that was forwarded to me by a friend. Broaden students' scientific communication skills by condensing the descriptive chemistry of an element down to a haiku.
This is a website which links to a wide variety of good quality YouTube mini-lectures on basic topics in chemistry, mathematics, physics and a variety of other sciences. Each video is about 10 minutes long and many go through example problems slowly and completely.
http://firstyear.chem.usyd.edu.au/iChem/lewis.shtml
A set of Flash-based, interactive tools for students to construct Lewis structures for electron deficient, octet rule obeying and hypervalent MLx molecules and ions (x = 2 - 6).
The user chooses the number of electrons and bond type (single, double or triple) and is steered towards the correct stucture.
For cases where resonance structures are possible, the user must construct each form to complete the puzzle.
I read about these new biology examples for intro chem in a recent Association for Women in Science (AWIS) Washington Wire (December 2009, Issue II). Professor Catherine Drennan from MIT and her colleagues introduced "examples of biological and medical topics that demonstrate chemistry principles into her introductory chemistry lectures to highlight the connection between the fields of biology and medicine, that students often love, and chemistry." Their assessment showed that the examples increased student satisfaction with the course.
This is a simple in class exercise to review acid- base equilibria and to lead the students to thinking about metals as both Lewis and Bronsted- Lowry acids. I use it as a discussion starter when I introduce the role of metals in biological acid/base chemistry in my upper division inorganic course, but it can be used at any level once acid-base equilibria has been covered.
I used this Excel spreadsheet to generate bingo cards for teaching *organic* nomenclature and functional groups to first year students during a recitation section. I gave each student a handful of pennies and a bingo card generated randomly. The topics could be easily changed to inorganic nomenclature, solid state lattices, you name it. Its a quick way to review a small amount of material before an exam.
A neat site that quizzes you on chemical symbols (e.g., Ag for silver), and donates rice for right answers. Hey, if students are going to learn chemical symbols, they may as well do it in a game setting, and many will find it a touch less pointless if they're doing someone else some good at the same time.
In this lab experiment, students use sol-gel chemistry to prepare silica gel monoliths from tetraethylorthosilicate (TEOS). Carrying out the hydrolysis and condensation under acid-catalyzed vs.
This website is a self-paced review of concepts for gen chem and includes test questions (and answers) for the reader. It would be a great site to point your intro chem students to if they want/need extra review. It is a set of 10 units, covering things like stoichiometry, unit conversions, and basic acid-base chemistry.