SLiThErs - Supporting Learning with Interactive Teaching: a Hosted, Engaging Roundtable

A collection of all of the IONiC VIPEr SLiThErs (Supporting Learning with Interactive Teaching: a Hosted, Engaging Roundtable). These events are short presentations on a topic followed by a period of discussion between the presenter and live participants. Each of these events is recorded and posted to the IONiC VIPEr YouTube Channel.

Chip Nataro / Lafayette College Thu, 12/17/2020 - 14:18

Coordination Bonding with Main Group Metals(?)

Submitted by A. M. Christianson / Bellarmine University on Wed, 12/11/2024 - 10:19
Description

This Literature Discussion considers the synthesis of the first carbene-bismuthinidene complex by Gilliard and coworkers in 2019. This molecule serves as an illustration of different bonding models, as it can be described by multiple resonance structures invoking fully covalent, zwitterionic, and coordinate/dative bonding forms. Students analyze these resonance structures and their geometrical implications, then compare to the experimental structural evidence to come to a conclusion about which bonding model(s) best describe this molecule!

Moleculuar Computation and Visualization in Undergraduate Education (MoleCVUE)
Description

The MoleCVUE website contains several items that should be of interest to the VIPEr community, especially the activities.  Each activity is designed to be ready to deploy in lecture, laboratory, or as homework.  There are activities covering all of the major subdisciplines of chemistry (some more than others).  Some activities that might be of particular interest to VIPEr are "Group Theory", "VSEPR", and "Electron Configurations of Atoms and Ions".  All of the activities are written to use WebMO, but could be adapted for other systems.  Most activities are doable with the free or demo versi

Kevin Range / Commonwealth University of Pennsylvania Fri, 08/09/2024 - 13:01
Literature Discussion Group Project
Description

This is a literature-based end of semester project.  After a semester of introducing literature in the form of typical literature discussions, this assignment is given to small groups.  It may be easily amended or added to.  Each group is provided with a paper and accompanying questions that are similar to the literature discussions they have done over the semester.  They then must use these guiding questions to assemble a presentation to the class.  The topics chosen and the guiding questions are designed to provide students with a taste of the many areas of inorganic chemistry that are no

Wes Farrell / United States Naval Academy Mon, 08/05/2024 - 14:23

Catalytic dechlorination of PVC

Submitted by Chip Nataro / Lafayette College on Wed, 07/24/2024 - 08:18
Description

This LO was inspired by a talk that Megan Fieser gave at the 2024 Organometallic Chemistry Gordon Research Conference. It was an excellent talk with some really interesting chemistry. Wanting something with practical application for my class focused on organometallic chemistry, I looked at one of her 'older' papers and found this really interesting rhodium catalyst. In the main paper for this LO (Mater. Horiz. 2023, 10, 2047), the catalytic dechlorination of poly(vinyl chloride) (PVC) using a rhodium pincer complex is described.

Europium-based Contrast Agents
Description

This learning object (LO) focuses on a recent JACS paper (J. Am. Chem. Soc. 2022, 144, 23053 -23060), which explores the chemistry of EuII-based contrast agents.

Sibrina Collins / College of Arts and Sciences at Lawrence Technological University Thu, 03/21/2024 - 15:34

The elusive tetrabenzylthorium compound (Bart)

Submitted by Joanne Stewart / Hope College on Thu, 03/14/2024 - 20:09
Description

This literature discussion learning object describes the isolation and structure of tetrabenzylthorium, a molecule that was synthesized many years ago but was never thoroughly characterized.

New Members of the Class of [Fe(CN)x(CO)y] Compounds (Koch)

Submitted by Barbara Reisner / James Madison University on Mon, 03/11/2024 - 17:23
Description

This LO was written by the IONiC Leadership Council to celebrate Steve Koch as the recipient of the 2024 ACS Award for Distinguished Service in Advancement of Inorganic Chemistry. Steve has been a major supporter of the IONiC community since its inception. This LO is based on the article New Members of the Class of [Fe(CN)x(CO)y] Compounds. published in Inorganic Chemistry (DOI: 10.1021/ic015604y).

An Exploration of Molecular Dihydrogen Complexes

Submitted by Adam Johnson / Harvey Mudd College on Mon, 11/27/2023 - 14:41
Description

I wanted my organometallic class to explore the bonding and spectroscopy of the Kubas dihydrogen complex without having to spend the time doing the entire literature discussion (which is really great and I have done it many times in the past) because I wanted to do it in only about 20-30 minutes in a 75 minute class period. Most of the questions come from the Kubas literature discussion, which I shortened. The IR and reduced mass calculations come from an LO I wrote about arene activation by Jones and Feher.

“Five” Slides About: Multiple Bonds

Submitted by Rebecca Eikey / Chestnut Hill College on Thu, 10/26/2023 - 09:15
Description

Here are 10 slides to introduce students to multiple bonds formed between transition metals and between transition metals and ligands. This can be adapted to general chemistry, as long as students have learned Lewis diagrams. This can also be extended to add more information on the nature of the multiple bonds for upper division use in inorganic and physical chemistry. 

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